Generating features about coping and wellness

The literary search suggests that coping and wellness are important in the world of work (Hillier et al., 2005). In the IOP profession the coping abilities and wellness of practitioners are so important that they are dealt within the ethical code. Article 107 of the Rules of Conduct pertaining to the Psychology Profession of the Health Professions Act, 1974 speaks to the impairment of practitioners. When a practitioner is impaired the risk of probable harm to clients increases. In creative analysis terminology the feature, intern impairment, is a risk where the intern may harm the client. The organisational perspective aligns coping and wellness with productivity and quality of service (Luthans, 2008). In the world of work, employee assistance programmes (EAPs) (Carrol, 1995) and health promoting programmes (HPPs) (Csiernik, 1995) are supported by employers, under the notion that it will protect or improve the return on investments. The coping and wellness features, which the dataset generate, are therefore fully embedded in psychology of work.

Stress and other forms of impairment may have many sources. The dataset reveals the following three: code of conduct, counselling sessions and the organisation. The intern reflected upon the code of conduct early in the internship. What was reflected upon in “Aspiring to the principle of love”, ELC 79, was the code forbidding the kindling of romantic relationships with clients: “I vent my frustration by getting the voices in my head to dialogue their positions and valuations.” That counselling sessions were a source of stress, was not a revelation. The reflection “Adam and Eve are '6-grand' of age”, ELC 102, showed the intern’s frustration with a psychology student who rejected evolution and decided to drop psychology: “Irritation creeps up from deep down in my chest and I am trying to fight off any facial expressions of hostility”. In “Star gates and worm holes”, ELC 204, the service deficits of the education institution increased the stress levels and impaired the intern’s wellness.

The effort to cope meant stress accumulated during the internship and resulted in a stress overhang with an unwell intern fighting back. But “Locked out”, ELC 106, revealed a healing phenomenon: “Amazed by her newly found devotion I ended the listen-to-talk session in cheerful mood”. The survey pattern constructed it differently: “[P]ositive stories may actually generate new energy and create eustress” (ELC 106).

105

Thus heutagogic learning revealed that career conversations may induce stress, but may also restore wellness. “Painting the voices in my mind”, ELC 108, confirmed this insight and assessed the nature of stories to make sense of eustress (Luthans, 2008): “Stories collapse ... onto canvass, or into writing and the feature transforms into an instance. Understanding of this transcendence has a healing or wellness affect” (ELC 108). Heutagogic learning revealed the interplay between the picosubsystem and its interpenetrating ecosystem and how the intern benefited from meaningful relationships.

Halfway through the internship a stressor emerged from the high number of contacts. The intern revealed that when building trust relationships with multiple clients over time, and carrying these professional acquaintances into the future, overpowered the memory. It resulted in: “[T]he sea of faces that live as pictures in my mind” (ELC 156). Joining the community of voices and distorted faces in the intern’s head, was the voice of the external supervisor: “An alien voice in me head will threaten my sense of sanity (S.O.S.). Maybe it is not about sanity at all, maybe it is the learning kicking in” (ELC 206). Where the voices in ELC 156 cried to be recognised in the crowd (the intern recorded more than a thousand client contacts), the voices in ELCs 204, 206 and 207 cried about being wronged by the macro-ethical dilapidation of the institution. These voices demanded restitution from the counsellor. The intern claimed that the wellness which interesting stories bring, was nullified by the restitution claims. Heutagogic learning reveals the nature of the close relationship between intern, student and institution. The students demand that the intern do right by them when the institution threatens their wellness. This shows how wellness is created and destroyed within the intern's ecosystem.

Reflection 208, “Accentuate the positive” reveals a coping pattern: “I am deliberately making the choice to live in the affirmative for the next six weeks.” The survey in pattern space constructs a global perspective in stating:

[T]he reflection represents wilful change to mind and behaviour as the [intern] shifts himself into the positive psychology realm. This is not a move towards learnt preservation but a move towards learnt prosperity

106

and wellness. This is creating his own wellness affirming programme (WAP). (ELC 208)

This wellness affirming programme can be linked to the student’s story in ELC 88, “Six all out”, and generates a pattern for learnt prosperity, or put differently, emergent wellness. It also generates a pattern for the emergence of qualitative management systems to supplement the currently popular quantitative quality management systems and human resources management (Cascio & Aguinis, 2005).

She has been in her current post for eight years getting sucked into a dark hole, so she is going to look for another position in the organisation. It is possible and that will probably stop the stagnation, and revitalise her career. Best outcome of them all, she will use the on site masseuse services of her employer’s wellness programme. She will also take her study unit for lunch and go and sit in the garden. (ELC 88)

The features bring the complex dynamic of wellness in the ecosystem of the intern to the surface. Even when wellness starts off as negative, positive experience patterns soon entangle the microsubsystem between intern and client. Wellness is also entangled with the macro-ethical issues in the exosubsystem. Moving down the timeline of the internship, the intern’s affective levels fluctuated between stress and eustress, but as eustress reduced any stress overhangs, the intern received a positive return on affective investments. Thus, experiential provocation and heutagogic learning result in a positive return on affective investments and generate innovative cognitive concepts. These concepts include: wellness affirming programme, learnt prosperity, emergent wellness and qualitative management. These concepts probably do not constitute a bifurcation towards professionalism, but contribute to the intern's development.