Real Influence by Mark Goulston & John Ullmen

Author:Mark Goulston & John Ullmen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: AMACOM Books
Published: 2013-04-19T14:00:00+00:00

Engaging at a Terrifying Time

Betty Gonzalez-Morkos is a clinical psychologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and she works in a clinic where children get diagnosed with cancer or blood disease.

She says, “It’s a scary environment. When the families first hear their child has cancer, the family and the patient go numb and they can’t hear anything else. They need to deal with the news that their child is not healthy, and that life is going to change. They need time to truly grieve what they just heard.”

She adds, “Even though childhood cancer has a higher remission rate, it’s still cancer. We need to give families the time they need to sit with what they’ve been given, and allow for emotional catharsis, and enable them to deal with the fear. It’s not the time to be pushing more information on them right away. The initial meeting for them is a blur. They’re on automatic pilot—that’s what we hear back from families later.”

This is why Dr. Gonzalez-Morkos doesn’t jump into treatment issues right then. Instead, she takes time to be emotionally present with her patients and families during the difficult initial meetings. It’s not enough, she says, for her merely to hear them out. She has to get what they’re going through, and they need to get that she gets it.

Dr. Gonzalez-Morkos says, “Being emotionally present is about saying what you feel—giving it a name. If you don’t label it—for example, anxiety or fear—then the families don’t think you get it. It’s important that they feel emotionally understood. If not, you’re just talking. You’re not connected.”

She notes, “Without the underlying feeling of ‘you really know what we’re going through’ it’s just a transaction. You might be sending information, but maybe it’s not being received, heard, and absorbed. If you’re not emotionally present, they don’t feel that sense of connectedness. It seems like you’re just going through the motions, just doing your job. It comes across as mechanical, and that you are an authority figure instead of a person with useful information who wants to help and wants the best for them.”

She observes, “I’ve never had a family say, ‘How do you know what we’re going through? You’ve never had a child with cancer.’ ” Even though she’s been spared this tragedy, they can sense from the way she engages in their there—talking openly about their terror, anxiety, and grief—that she truly understands what they’re going through. And as a result, they’re willing to entrust the most precious person in their lives to her care.

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