Quote of the Day

Helping begins by understanding ourself
I recall hearing Fritz give a brilliant lecture to about 500 educators. He said, "As teachers we have a room, a group, equipment, materials, a curriculum, instructional methods, and grades; but most of all, we have ourselves. What happens to us emotionally in the process of teaching emotionally disturbed kids is the critical factor in determining our effectiveness." Fritz continued by emphasizing that there are no great teachers, psychologists, social workers. or child care counselors. He smiled and said, "There are not enough angels to go around, so ordinary people, like us, with our unique histories choose to work with emotionally disturbed kids."

He pointed out that there are many troubled students in our classrooms with whom we have an excellent psychological fit and as a result we feel comfortable and competent to help them. There are other students with whom the psychological fit is okay, hut we will need professional support to maintain a helping relationship. He also believed that there are a few students in every classroom or residential center who have the ability to stir up strong feelings in us. The intensity of these stirred-up feelings represents our unfinished social history or developmental conflicts. This becomes our personal and private psychological luggage which we carry with us on our daily travels.

Unfortunately, a few students seem to have the emotional keys to our psychological luggage and they seem to delight in exposing our "personal affairs" to everyone in the setting. As a result, these students are emotionally upsetting and difficult for us to help so we are likely to react to their attacks by calling them, "too sick for this program," "Crazy," ‘Bizarre," or "Psychotic". While name calling may soothe our feelings temporarily, the reality of our profession demands that we acknowledge how our social history predetermines us to respond to select behaviors in specific ways.

Helping begins by understanding the dynamics of aggression
The other side of self-awareness is to understand the "Dynamics of the Aggressive Conflict Cycle" and how aggressive students can create in us their feelings, and if we are not trained how they can cause us to mirror their aggressive behavior, independent of our social history and personality.

While aggressive behavior is driven by many different reasons, the dynamics of aggression is predictable. The aggressive student has never learned to tolerate normal amounts of frustration, disappointment or anxiety. Instead of owning these feelings, he gives them away by attacking or depreciating everyone in sight. He knows how to engage us by using words and/or actions which "push our emotional buttons." While these aggressive behaviors reduce the aggressive student*s level of anxiety, his behavior simultaneously creates normal counteraggressive feelings in us. If we are not trained to understand the dynamics of aggression, we not only will pick up the student*s aggressive feelings but also we will behave in similar counteraggressive ways, thus escalating the conflict. For example, when a student shouts, "I*m not going to do it!" "Don*t you hear me?!" We are likely to raise our voice and say, "You will do it!" "Do You Hear Me?!"

By mirroring the student behavior, we create more psychological stress in the student. The student*s feelings become more intense, and his behavior becomes more primitive. At this point, we become locked into a power struggle with the student and will continue to escalate the problem beyond reason. At this moment, most of us, who are caught in this power struggle frequently say with triumphant resentfulness, "I would rather die than give in to this S.O.B. student." What*s surprising about this Aggressive Conflict Cycle is that even if the student loses the power struggle and is suspended, or physically restrained, the aggressive student*s basic assumptions that adults are hostile and that he has a right to be angry or "to get even" are reinforced. Clearly there are no winners in a power struggle with aggressive students.

NICHOLAS LONG
Long, N. (1991). What Fritz Redl taught me about aggression: Understanding the dynamics of aggression and counteraggression in students and staff. In Morse, E.C. (Ed.) Crisis intervention in residential treatment: The clinical innovations of Fritz Redl. New York: The Haworth Press.