Rethinking Mental Health Care with Nicole Clark

I, I put this in layman terms for the young adults that I work with all the time.

So I, I work with mostly neurospicy individuals, as I like to call them, neuro- neurodivergent, neurospicy.

And, you know, sometimes we might have a, a kid or young adult having a particularly bad day, and maybe they call somebody else a name or call Miss Thea, "Oh, Miss Thea's being a jerk." Okay.

And then, you know, I have some very rigid kids that are like, "Miss Thea, they called you a bad name.

Why would they do that?" And they, they get, they spin out on this, right? And so I always have the lecture with the whole group all the time, "Hey, guys, someone great once said," I think it was Brene Brown, "uh, everyone is fighting a bigger battle than you can know." So people are fighting battles, uh, in their lives.

Uh, uh, what's going on, like, you, you have no idea what's going on behind, behind closed doors or h- closed eyes or closed, you know, in their brain.

Um, and so what you can do is kill them with genuine kindness.

I want you to, if they've been mean to you, I want you to self-advocate, but also come, come to one of us and let us know.

But, you know, try to, try to show them kindness and compassion back, because a lot of times I feel that, um, we mirror calmness.

So if one person has escalated it up here, if we come in with genu- genuine kindness, not condescending, 'cause that, that can make them elevat- el- escalate more, I feel.

Um, kill them with genuine kindness.

Yeah.

And I think it's also important to add on to that.

Yeah.

It's not our job to solve everyone else's problem unless they are asking for your help.

Correct.

That's a big one.

I am a codependent survivor.

[laughs] I, in recovery codependent person.

Uh, I talk about that a lot.

Um, I'm a caretaker.

I want to solve everyone's problems.

I went into a field, a career that allowed me to just be codependent as much as possible so I can solve everybody else's problems.

So learning-

I think most nurses do start out this way.