On my previous shift, I spent most of my time with a client who is blind. The person is infamous for their pride in keeping their belongings and their apartment well-organized. The first time I met them, they showed me their hat collection, which were neatly hung on the wall. No doubt, I was impressed.
The person is not blind by birth but lost their ability to see after a brain injury.
Disability can often decrease one’s self-esteem which results in a generally negative affect. However, this person is a contradiction to that. They would not let their disability define them. For the past few days, they have been working hard and doing all the things that needed to be done in order to restart their education. Although ambitious, they know their limits as well as they know their strengths. The person has a clear idea of what they want to learn, how they want to move out of this town, and where they want to settle down. The fire in them is making them unstoppable. They are persistent and determined and never kept a task for later.
Our brain does a fascinating thing: if one of our sense organs stops working or doesn’t function well, the other sense organs make up for it. There is evidence that when one part of the brain that handled the function of a sensory organ, say the eyes, gets severely damaged, the brain’s ability to rewire itself (neural plasticity) helps other areas, such as the auditory cortex that handles hearing, to become more enhanced. This is the reason why people who are blind often have a heightened sense of hearing. The person I mentioned above is no exception to that. Their hearing and sense of smell are impressive. But, just like how their brain is making up for what’s lacking to experience the world around them, their mind is also making up for what’s lacking to experience complete autonomy by persevering more.
This made me have a massive respect for this person. Against all the odds, they are not ready to give up on themselves. Toward the end of the shift, they even told us how we cannot always depend on others to get things done or to take care of us; how we have to be our own people.
But again, this person is one of the clients that’s said to be “difficult.” From what I understood, the reason some may find this person as “difficult” is maybe because of the person’s attitude towards things that they do know. They are smart and they want others to acknowledge it as well. They don’t particularly like it when others outsmart them either. They would repeat the statement “I’m pretty smart, eh?” a thousand times in a 2-3 hour shift. Some people define this as their “ego” while I think it is just that the person likes it when they are right and they say so too. What has to be understood here is that it is this very belief that is fuelling them to pursue their passion.
In dealing with clients such as them, it is important that we control our righting reflex. We are often quick to give advice or interrupt them while they are trying to explain how they are right about a certain thing. No matter how silly you may think the matter is, appreciating them for things they are right about is a major way through which we can respect them and connect with them. On times when they are obviously wrong, it’s better to say “You might be right, however, do you think…?” kind of statements, where they are given a choice to think about the possibility of an alternate option, instead of trying to convince them that they are wrong. If they do not want to accept, then the best thing, as my fellow co-worker said, is to let them find out on their own.
While talking about this to our supervisor, she told us about an incident with another client. The person wouldn’t believe that most food delivery services do not take cash on delivery anymore. They do not understand the credit card system, nor were they ready to even hear about it. As much as my supervisor tried to convince them, they wouldn’t listen, until they ordered and found out on their own. The person has significant memory deficits, even then, they learned on their own that there is only one place that still offers cash on delivery and they started ordering from there since. My supervisor told us that somehow their brain filtered in the information that they should not order from anywhere except that one place even though they may not even remember why.
That is how fascinating the brain is. No matter how injured it becomes, it still finds ways to thrive in every way possible. The clients I have met prove to me the same every single day. Whether it’s passionately pursuing something against all physical challenges or retaining information without even remembering it, the brain surprises us in creative ways.
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- “I’m pretty smart, eh?”On my previous shift, I spent most of my time with a client who is blind. The person is infamous for their pride in keeping their belongings and their apartment… Read more: “I’m pretty smart, eh?”
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