MC Tools—11

CHOPS Inventory

Supporting A4 Workers

Chennai, India: family en route with sleeping child
April 2012 © MOD
 

This is our 200^th weblog entry.

The first weblog entry was exactly six years ago, on 28 December 2006.

So we are celebrating six years and 200 blog entries of

reflections, research, and resources for good practice.

Deo gratias.

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 The final tool in this series of entries is an updated version of our favourite one: the CHOPS Inventory. We developed the first version of this tool in 1990 as a way to review struggles for mission workers. Since then it has been expanded to include: more categories; an emphasis on successes and strategies in addition to struggles; applicability for mission/aid workers (not just faith-based workers); and translations into seven languages.

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The latest version of CHOPS (shared below for the first time) now includes examples of additional challenges that are often experienced by mission/aid colleagues from the A4 regions (African, America-Latina, Arabic-Turkic, Asian). These additions can be summarised in terms of family, finances, and freedom, with all three being permeated by the challenges of maintaining faith-focus vs fear-anxiety. See the items below in green font.

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CHOPS Inventory

Revised December 2012: Click here for a pdf version

Cross-cultural workers can have experiences that make them feel like "sheep in the midst of wolves." This exercise explores ten "wolves"—which we refer to as stressors—that these workers frequently encounter. We use the acronym "CHOPS" as a way to help identify and deal with these stress-producing "wolves". Note that each stressor can be both a source of stress and/or a symptom of stress. 

Directions 1. Using a separate piece of paper, write down some of the stressors that you have experienced over the past several months. Refer to the 10 stressors and some of the examples mentioned below. Put these under a column labelled "Struggles."   2. In a second column, "Successes", list some of the helpful ways you have dealt with stress during the last several months.   3. Next, under a "Strategies" column, list ideas for better managing stress in the future.   4. You may also want to do the same with or for some important people in your life, such as individuals and groups found at the bottom of this page. Discuss your responses with a close friend.

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Struggles      Successes ___Strategies

Cultural (getting needs met in unfamiliar ways: language learning, culture shock, reentry) feeling rejected, overlooked, or undervalued by the dominant “international” mis/aid culture; gender bias, prejudice, lack of opportunity/freedom

 
Crises (potentially traumatic events: natural disasters, wars, accidents, political instability protracted armed conflicts and physical threats, one’s own community and country affected
 
Historical (unresolved past areas of personal and social struggle: family of origin issues, personal weaknesses) lack of educational, health, economic opportunities (i.e. social determinants of health)
 
Human (relationships: with family members, colleagues, nationals: raising children, couple conflict, struggles with team members, social opposition) caring for ageing parents, few school options, human rights violations, persecution, discrimination, stigma
 
Occupational (job-specific challenges and pressures: work load, travel schedule, exposure to people with problems, job satisfaction, more training, government "red tape") job insecurity, short-term contracts, mis/aid work not understood or respected
 
Organisational (governance and management: incongruence between one's background and the organisational ethos, policies, work style, expectations; incompetence, corruption, abusive leadership, dysfunction, disability practices) legal protection, training
 
Physical (overall health and factors that affect it: nutrition, climate, illness, ageing, environment) no medical resources/insurance and inadequate nutritional options, injuries/road traffic accidents
 
Psychological (overall emotional stability and self-esteem: loneliness, frustration, depression, unwanted habits, developmental issues/stage of life issues) cumulative impact of “adverse life events”
 
Support (resources to sustain one's work: finances, housing, clerical/technical help, donor contact minimum pay and financial support, finances used for survival and not just for one’s mis/aid work
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Spiritual (God and/or transcendent values: meaning, evil, inner growth, practices/disciplines) lack of trust/respect for spiritual leaders
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Answers apply to (circle):
self, spouse, child, friend, department, team, company, other

Earlier version available in
Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, German,Spanish, and Portuguese

©2012 Dr. Kelly O’Donnell and Dr. Michèle Lewis O’Donnell

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Want to know more about challenges for those from A4 regions? See the article by John Fawcett, Supporting Local Staff, including the two short case studies at the end by Viola Mukasa.

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Want to go even further? See the three articles that overview challenges for workers from Latin America, India, and Africa as well as the short case examples for workers in and/or from China. Available at: www.chinamembercare.org (see table of contents in English; this site also includes materials in traditional/simplified Chinese along with Mandarin audio files).
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Do you have suggestions for improving CHOPS, including A4-related items? Contact us at:

MCAresources@gmail.com 

MC Tools—10

Assessing Work-Life Balance

The Harvest, by Pieter Bruegal the Elder (1565)
 

We are sharing some tools to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

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Our Reality DOSE! website includes links to several online tools. Go to the section called Giants, Foxes, Wolves, and Flies.  At the bottom you will find a listing of several free tools you can use for yourself and with others.  For example, in this entry we are highlighting two self-assessment tools for work-life balance that are included in this listing. Give them a try!

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1. Self-Care and Lifestyle Balance Inventory (25 items), Headington Institute

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2. Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL 5), available in 17 languages (note: according to the website, the ProQOL measures “the negative and positive effects of helping others who experience suffering and trauma. The ProQOL has sub-scales for compassion satisfaction, burnout and compassion fatigue.”

MC Tools—9

Music for Mourning:
Human Hurricanes

We are in Connecticut USA---arriving in time for Hurricane Sandy last month and also now back in time for this human hurricane at Sandy Hook School—the shooting of 20 children and seven adults. Lots of mourning. And vigils. And lots of questions about how to prevent such mass killings from happening (and not just in the USA hopefully).

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There are many bright lights in all of this though--the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it (John's gospel). One of these lights is the song that was just put together by some musician-friends of ours. It is a “raw song”—that is, not polished in a studio, fresh from the heart. Click the video image above or click here to listen. http://youtu.be/B12VWDbYeJs

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Notes:
1. For more reflections on resiliency, trauma, and weeping, see our entry on 9 Jan 2010:
http://coremembercare.blogspot.com/2010/01/member-care-and-resiliency-part-4.html

This entry includes a link to Jon Foreman's song on finding a cure for pain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-_sZIh2cQ
For the version with lyrics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3J6mETFE48
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2. We are sharing some tools via these entries to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

MC Tools—8

Positive Psychology:

Learning Skills for Wellbeing

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 We are sharing some tools to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

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Watch the six minute interview with Dr. Martin Seligman,

describing positive psychology, authentic happiness, and wellbeing 
in terms of his PERMA model

(Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-g_dwgJig

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 Our Reality DOSE! website includes links to several online tools. Go to the section called Giants, Foxes, Wolves, and Flies.  At the bottom you will find a listing of several free tools you can use for yourself and with others. For example, go to the Authentic Happiness site to access assessment tools from the field of positive psychology. One of the tools we use the most is the Brief Strengths Test (assessing 24 character qualities) and the Authentic Happiness Inventory (assessing core components of happiness described in his PERMA model—see video clip above). Registering on the site in order to use these tools is free, easy, and confidential.

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Note: Positive psychology, as defined on the Authentic Happiness homepage, is “a branch of psychology which focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions.”

MC Tools—7

Giants, Foxes, Wolves, and Flies

 

 We are sharing some tools to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

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Our Reality DOSE! website has several self-assessment tools that you may find helpful.  One item in particular is the short article-tool we developed for the faith-based, Christian sector called Giants, Foxes, Wolves, and Flies: Helping Ourselves and Others. We often recommend and use this short article as a creative way for people/groups in mission/aid to look at their life and work—the challenges, struggles, successes, competencies, etc.  It is also available in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish. Here is the opening section.

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Have you ever seen the movie, "The Wizard of Oz?" Filmed in 1939, this fantasy classic portrays the adventures of a young girl who tries to return home from a magic land lying somewhere over a rainbow. During one scene, Dorothy and her companions approach a dark forest en route to the Emerald City. Anxiously wondering what wild beasts might lie within, they begin to chant, "Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!
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Watch the 30 second clip! ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NecK4MwOfeI

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For cross-cultural workers, frequently beset with analogous challenges, a similar refrain can be heard: "Giants, and foxes, and wolves, and flies!" Who are these creatures, and what do they have to do with our life and work? In brief, they are Biblical metaphors representing the struggles that we often experience as we try to serve God in new ways or unfamiliar places.

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Here's a quick overview. Giants seek to disable us by exploiting our vulnerabilities (2 Samuel 21:15-22). Foxes try to distract us and cause us to drift off our primary tasks (Song of Solomon 2:15). Wolves endeavor to distress us, keeping our stress levels high and our lives out of balance (Matthew 10:16). And flies purpose to disgrace us by the contaminating effects of sin (Ecclesiastes 10:1). The Enemy seeks to use all four of these creatures to sift us like wheat, and ultimately destroy our life an work for the Lord. Let's take a closer look at these creatures and explore some ways to deal with them.

MC Tools—6

Tear Soup

 We are sharing some tools to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

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Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss

 “Cry when you want to, laugh when you can.”

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Tear Soup is a tool to help people deal with grief and loss. It creatively tells the story of a person who is dealing with a major loss via the metaphor of making soup. Tear Soup is in three formats: book, DVD (17 minutes), and Power Point. The book is written simply with full-page illustrations to complement the many principles and “ingredients” described (also in Spanish). We have found that people from many backgrounds and both young and old are able to “savor” this story and easily apply it to their own soup making process. Tear Soup is available from Grief Watch: Resources for Bereaved Families and Professional Caregivers. See their web site for more materials including Grief Facts and Helpful Links.

 

We have used the book and DVD with mission/aid workers in different settings: supportive counseling with individuals; small group readings/discussions; group enactment where there is significant loss/transition. One example of the latter is when we used some of the concepts from the book and placed two large imaginary caldrons in the middle of the group in order to make what we call “group-soup.” In this case, the group made a large pot of  tear group-soup and also a large pot of courage group-soup (to also focus on the positive choices/actions—the soup ingredients—that people had taken and would need to take). There are lots of creative and helpful ways to use the material in the book and the metaphor of soup making. Bon appetit!

MC Tools--5

Reality Rhymes

We are sharing some tools to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

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 What can we learn from rhymes? Plenty! What are some of your favourites? And how to use them in member care contexts? Here are three rhymes that we really like.

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The Elf-Man

John Kendric Bangs

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I met a little Elf-man, once,

Down where the lilies blow.

I asked him why he was so small

And why he didn't grow.

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He slightly frowned, and with his eye

He looked me through and through.

"I'm quite as big for me," said he,

"As you are big for you."

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(possible use: diversity, seeing life in new ways)

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Foreign Lands

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Up into the cherry tree

Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad in foreign lands.
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I saw the next door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers, before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.
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I saw the dimpling river pass
And be the sky's blue looking-glass;
The dusty roads go up and down
With people tramping in to town.
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If I could find a higher tree
Farther and farther I should see,
To where the grown-up river slips
Into the sea among the ships,
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To where the roads on either hand
Lead onward into fairy land,
Where all the children dine at five,
And all the playthings come alive.
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(possible use: aspirations, exploring the world, etc.)

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He Bebido

Anonymous, South American

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He bebido

Paisajes y paisajes:

Pampa, cielo, y mar.

Ahora solo quiero

Las islas de tus ojos chiquitos

Para anclar.

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I have travelled in life far and wide:

drinking deeply of the plains, seas, and skies.

Now all I yearn for is to abide:

anchoring in the islands of your eyes.

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(possible use: sojourns, coming home, relationships, etc.)

MC Tools—4

Dealing with Depression

We are sharing some tools to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

 

Here is a creative animation piece on depression (four minutes) called I Had a Black Dog by Matthew Johnstone. It is based on his book Living with a Black Dog: His Name is Depression. Have a watch!

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More on Depression

Depression was the theme of the 2012 World Mental Health Day (10 October 2010). Depression currently accounts for the third highest burden of disease globally, and is predicted to be the highest burden by 2030. Depression is significantly higher for females than males and is the leading cause of disease burden for women across all countries and income levels. Suicide (which is closely related to depression) is the second most common cause of death among young people globally.

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For more information on depression:

See the materials prepared for this year’s World Mental Health Day by the World Federation for Mental Health (Depression: A Global Crisis) available in English, Hindi, Japanese, and Spanish:
 http://www.wfmh.org/00WorldMentalHealthDay.htm 

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See the material at:
International Foundation for Research and Education on Depression

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See the information and fact sheet on depression by the World Health Organization:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2012/mental_health_day_20121009/en/index.html

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For more information on the current efforts to promote mental health and reduce the mental health treatment gap see the World Health Organization’s draft of the Global Mental Health-Action Plan 2013-2020.

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 And He shall wipe away every tear room their eyes,

and there shall no longer be any death;

there shall no longer be any morning, or crying or pain;

the first things have passed away.

Revelation 21:4

MC Tools—3

OH Cards

We are sharing some tools to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

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We got the original version of OH cards in the early 1990s (two decks of 88 cards, one deck with words and one deck with images of paintings). We use them periodically with training groups and teams professionally and sometimes with friends and colleagues in informal settings. We do not recommend them for everyone and we actually recommend that people-facilitators using them have training in interpersonal/team dynamics as well as counseling  (http://www.oh-cards.com/). Here is an overview about them from wiki:

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“OH Cards are a genre of special playing cards used as story–telling prompters, counseling and psychotherapeutic tools, communication enhancers, educational aids, and social interactive games. OH cards have no official or traditional interpretations of images, and instructions included with the decks encourage imaginative and personal interpretations of the images. Usually these images are small paintings created by various artists specifically for this kind of use. As a genre, OH cards are unconventional "information containers", unbound books with no set sequence of pages.

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Their most common uses are as a focus for self–examination and as prompters in social interactions. They are often used as aides in psychotherapeutic settings, and in a variety of educational situations. Less commonly, OH cards are used as catalysts in artistic fields: in writing, painting, theatre, even dance.

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Categorically OH Cards operate in the interface of literature, art appreciation, games, and psychology. Most commonly they are used as a focus for self-examination.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OH_Cards)

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One of our favourite uses of these cards is with a group in which we all imagine the group as being a caravan going on a challenging journey, with the various cards being used for people to describe what the journey is like, their aspirations, fears, strengths, destination, etc. Overall we see OH Cards, when used by skilled facilitators, as being a creative and powerful tool, tapping into the unconscious and conscious for personal and group growth.

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For a bit of an example of what this is like, have a look at the Shadow Cards site to see how similar cards can be used. But note that Shadow Cards can be seen as too “fringe” and that referring to them as being like “Jungian Tarot cards” is a total no-go for us.

MC Tools—2

Talking Tears

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We are sharing some tools to support personal growth, relationship health, organizational development, and overall effectiveness for mission/aid workers. Hopefully you will find them to be creative, useful, and at times even fun. They are some of our favourites.

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These items build upon the 12 tools for “Running Well and Resting Well” that we included as a chapter in Doing Member Care Well (2002). More tools and guidelines specifically for team building .are included in our “Tools for Team Viability” article, in the member care book we edited in 1992.

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Think of the last time you cried.

Or think about something that you could cry about….

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·         If my tears could talk, what would they say…
·         If I responded to my tears, I would say…
·         If my tears could write, what would they write …
·         If my tears could draw, what would they draw…
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Going further….

·         An image that comes to mind for me…
·        A film clip that comes to mind for me…
·        A song that comes to mind for me…
·        A piece of writing that comes to mind for me…
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 And…

I would like to share something about the above items with…
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Notes

The image at the beginning is a detail from Antonello da Messina’s painting (circa 1476) of  a grieving angel holding up the body of Christ. This painting and the detail are included in chpter 12 of Global Member Care: The Pearls and Perils of Good Practice (2011).

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One music video that comes to mind for me is by Bryan Adams and used in the 1991 movie Robin Hood, Prince of Theives. With over 67 million views, it seems that lots of folks like this music video too. It is a bit stylised of course. I prefer the song without the “I’d lie for you” lyric. Although as I recall in the movie, the “lying” was a moral necessity in order to save the lives of innocent people.

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“e will wipe He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Revelation 21:4)