La Vie Counseling Associates

“Life is difficult”, wrote Scott Peck.  He saw this truth as freeing. “Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it- then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

Organizations have boundaries, too (like school, IRS, work, governments). These systems  have powerful influences and demands on us.  We all participate in multiple overlapping boundary systems. Here’s how one group of students learned to navigate a productive path through those systemic demands.

I’ve just come from a rollicking going away party given by my colleagues at Fullerton College.  I’ve been a Counselor/Mentor to 150 Welfare to Work students each academic year for the past eight years.  This CalWorks Counseling Program is a grant program designed to support students living below the poverty level, nearly all single parent families, get started on an educational path that offers them an opportunity to change their lives.

I was blessed to get to see some amazing transformations.  I met students from other countries who needed a translator to help us communicate in our first sessions eventually work through all the ESL classes, complete their Associates Degree and move on to university.  Students who came in not knowing what they wanted to major in, finding their passion and two years later transfer on a full scholarship to places like USC, Berkeley and University of Washington.

So I’ve thinking what role I played on their path during these past eight years.  It’s probably not a shock that I might see my involvement as something to do with boundaries. What I concentrated on was helping them understand the multiple boundary systems that they were involved in according to their situation and help them figure out how to best negotiate them. Here are just a few of the boundaried systems that I saw these students involved in:

-Their single parent family system

-Often their original family of origin system since many students had to move home because of finances.

-CalWORKs  Welfare-to-Work County Program that delivered  cash aid, food stamps and help with childcare.

-CalWORKs Counseling Office- This was our office and we partnered with the Orange County CalWORKs Program to help the students be successful in school and compliant with the County’s requirements. And yes, our program had it’s demands on the students as well.

-EOPS- Another terrific support program on campus dedicated to retaining students from socioeconomically and educationally challenged backgrounds succeed and transfer to university. They had requirements of attendance to workshops and academic counseling appointments

-Fullerton College- if you want their degree you’ll have to carry out their requirements

-Employment- about a third of the students were able to (needed to) do part time work.

-DASU- a domestic violence recovery program that included education and therapy. Many of the students referred to us were participating in this sub-system of CalWORKs.

Each of these systems had their own boundaries that they wanted participants to operate in to be a member. Whether it was a family, school or support program, each system had their recipe for the student success.  A good number of our students were in all these programs (and more)!

When students began, they often felt overwhelmed trying to serve all these systems and would drive themselves into high stress trying to carry out each and every requirement as an “A” priority.

What seemed to help, over time, was helping students find what was important for them inside their own boundary system. They would spend so much energy figuring out how to placate the outside systems needs that they would ignore their own needs.  They were used to operating in survival mode. Knowing their own needs and goals made the decision making of where to spend their time and resources (contained within their own boundary system) easier and more productive.

So for these students, steps to negotiating these multiple boundary systems would go something like this:

First-We would normalize the stress they were experiencing. Change is stressful. They often thought there was something wrong with them that they felt so overwhelmed.  Anyone would feel overwhelmed serving all these masters.  And they were new to college whether they were 18 or 38 years old.   We would let them know that it gets easier month by month and semester by semester.

Second- Encourage them to begin to look within to determine what the priorities are in their life. Knowing their needs and goals helped them determine which of these systems were a priority right now and moved them in a direction that was more self-supporting.

Third-Seek help.  Often when under duress students would isolate, blame themselves and not come see us until more problems developed. We reminded them that these programs were there to help but you had to show up and ask.

Fourth- Build a support team.  One of the biggest indicators that a student was growing was when he/she developed supportive friendships on campus.  These students shared their lives together at all levels and helped each other with childcare, study groups and anything that helped move them forward. You could tell these students because they’d start showing up for their appointments in two’s or three’s. Susan Vincent in EOPs had a knack for creating an environment in her counseling class where students met and developed friendships that lasted throughout their Fullerton College stay and beyond.

Fifth- Check in with their goals from time to time.  Education changes people and when people change, the goals may change.  Keep checking within their boundary system to see if they need to update their internal maps so they can set or reset their priorities amongst all those systems to get the most productive result.

The best part of my time at Fullerton College (apart from the team I worked with) was watching students grow from a life of dependence on all those support system to a life that used those support systems to begin to thrive and eventually to a life independent of the support systems.  Many made that transition.

So the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the systemic masters you have to serve, remember the Fullerton College CalWORKs students and how they got through.  If they can negotiate their way through them, you can too.

I was doing my rotation on the Family Night Lecture series at Able To Change Recovery and a family walked in together; mother, father, two siblings and the resident of the recovery program.  The resident, a serious looking 20 something woman with 21 days soberiety, raised her hand and spoke up, “Before we get started, can I ask a question about boundaries?” “Of course”, I replied, “What’s up?

“Well, I’ve been thinking about going to church.  There’s been a lot of talk in my groups  about a Higher Power that I’ve been connecting with that discussion and I thought I’d like to try going to church.”

“Sounds good.  So what’s your question?”

“My dad (who was sitting on her right) is insisting on going with me. And I don’t want him to go.  I want to go on my own.”

I looked at dad and asked him, “What’s the story dad.”

“I’ve been trying to get her to go to church forever.  Now she’s talking about going and she wants to exclude me!”

I turned back to the daughter. “Tell us what’s on your mind.”

“I just want to have my own experience of going to church. I want to go and I don’t want to be looking to see how my dad thinks I’m doing or if my mom is comfortable.  I really want to experience church on my own without any distractions.  It’s not about them. Don’t I have a right to set that boundary?”

 I stood there thinking to myself, “She’s trying to connect with her Higher Power.  She sounds connected in her groups. She’s attempting to set boundaries.  She’s speaking about it respectfully to her family.  This sounds pretty good.  She sounds on track.”

I turned to dad and asked, “You heard what she said dad.  What do you think?”

Dad says,” I still think I should get to go with her.”  And sounded a bit hurt about it. His daughter frowned.

This family is in the Transition Stage of a Family In Recovery.  Stephanie Brown PhD. and Virginia Lewis PhD. wrote about families recovering from being infected with addiction.  They defined the Transition Stage as the 4-12 months after someone enters recovery. One of the characteristics of this period were emerging “new selves” in the family. Developing boundaries helps those emerging new selves evolve.  During the Using Stage, the addict/alcoholic had become “symbiotic” with their substance.  The researchers saw the family members becoming over-involved with the addict/alcoholic in the stress and chaos of the Using Stage.

In Transition, successful families became aware of separate boundaries within the family.  The separateness helped the addict/alcoholic identify and clarify the work they needed to do in their recovery. Boundaries also helped the family members to see their own work they had ahead of them.  Boundaries help family members disengage from the old patterns of trying to “fix” their addict/alcoholic; being “other-focused”.

But old relational patterns are hard to break. And families in transition also noted a feeling of abandonment when new boundaries were being set.  In this family at Family Night, I heard a young woman looking to explore her spiritual inner world by attending church.  And setting a boundary so she could more clearly hear her own response.  Dad sounded a bit hurt that he was being excluded; a bit abandoned.  In Transition, families can benefit from opening up to a new perspective.  People in recovery are working on themselves; not others. As a result the family may feel less relational. 

But this is just the first stage on the road to new health and well being for the family.  And the work here and now is about improving each of the building blocks in the family. This renovative work is most successful when people do the work themselves, on themselves. And allow the others in the family to define and do the work they feel they need to do.

This late winter weather we’re having here in Southern California reminded me of the huge storms we had in late December. As I made my way around Orange County the day after the storm ended it was hard not to miss the signs and effects everywhere you went.  Clean up was occurring on every street and in every town.  The local and state governments have systems of storm drains and culverts in place to deal with weather; boundaries,  if you allow the analogy, for the water.  They work just fine most of the time. But this storm overwhelmed the system.

Behind the Salvation Army store in San Clemente, a storm drain tunnel got plugged up by the sheer volume of debris coming down the drain.  That caused the culvert to overflow it’s banks and created a river and then a lake where the street used to be. Normally the culvert could handle the debris.

The sheer volume of input caused boundary failure of a system that generally operates just fine.

1. First, be gentle with yourself.  Acknowledge we are not perfect.  If amends are appropriate, step up to the relational plate and make it.
2. Accept the reality that boundary failure happens and make arrangements to clean up and start again. The day after the storm, stores were shuttered, people took the day off from work and roads were closed.  After some focused effort, the culvert system was restored to operating.
3. Reach for your Higher Power to recharge your interior.  Almost invariably in my postmortem of a boundary failure I find I was low energy and not mindful of my Higher Power in my life.
4. Get help- The day I saw the mess behind the Salvation Army,  a team of Caltrans workers were there digging out the junk and clearing the culverts.  It wasn’t one person with a shovel.  Peer support can bring support, understanding and a fresh perspective to your clean-up work.

Boundary Failure happens. It’s what we do next that will determine if it becomes a opportunity to learn about ourselves and grow or to hunker down and feel self-righteous about the reasons we had to do what we did.

By the way, I think , my sons would say I’m doing much better today with my boundary containment.  Of course, I think they are doing better at noticing their dad is human and becoming more accepting of him.