University of Helsinki
Youth who are recovering from substance abuse also have experiences of not having been challenged the way they are at the residential community. Offering challenges and responsibility is obviously linked to perceiving a person as capable of responding to expectations. It is not only a matter of technical performance, or responding to the expectation in that sense, but also of the person wanting to become part of a community, and the community accepting them as a member.
’And the community is there to spur you on. And when you see that others can do it, then I will do it too.”
Sometimes challenging happens in a situation that leaves no choice, or is really pressing:
Youth: I have no options while I live at K-tie. Well, what has led to this. Not being able to go back, that there is nothing to go back to.
Maritta: Is it a little bit like a pressing need?
Youth: It is kind of like a pressing need. It’s good really, that there’s this pressure. If it wasn’t there, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to make it.
Maritta: How does this pressure feel?
Youth: Not so bad any more. It feels kind of good now. And if not quite good all the time, at least like this way it’s possible to change. …
Maritta: At what stage did you notice that this pressure starts to change and starts to feel better?
Youth: At the point when I stopped fighting against the pressure and at the point when I became part of the community.
Maritta: Did that happen right at the beginning?
Youth: No, no. It took a couple of months. That I rebelled and I resisted everything and it affected others. It was noticed and they drew attention to it and I got feedback, criticism and assignments. And then when I had done those … It took some time. And it was a process, a bit like today, where you go through developmental trajectories and then you share them with others.
Maritta: So there they pressure you a little to talk to others as well, and to share your issues.
Youth: Yes.
When a young person gets to engage in doing something and receives positive feedback for it, it builds their self-confidence. They can see how other young people get a hold of working life, functioning as role models. Part of offering challenges and responsibilities is direct talk, which demands that the youth must act, but also aims to clarify the principles of the action. This signals caring, and that what the young person does next is not inconsequential.
Youth: And when you hear these stories, and when you’ve come to K-tie and you’re still like you hear non-existent voices a bit and then you get to go to a job trial, and you do well and get good feedback. It’s like if that one can do it, so can I, but about but anyway it somehow works better through example. Or having someone to kick your backside. Like often these things fall flat because they don’t tell you things straight or they let you be passive in these things. Maybe it’s been my problem, too, that there hasn’t been … while at K-tie they tell you straight that they will kick your backside if you don’t do your job properly. I’ve been told quite straight that if something doesn’t make any sense, then it just doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like everyone does it in their own way. You know, they say it straight and return you to the ground, because it’s what I’ve never really had at home.
The young people also find it important that they are not allowed to skive from their duties. They are expected to do their part. Sometimes it feels like they are being pressured, but it has also supported them to dare to try things they would not have otherwise had the courage to attempt.
’At K-tie you learn a kind of responsible attitude and you don’t skive from things and things are planned in advance, so that has brought kind of security and direction to my life.’
’That treatment has pressured me to do things that have caused anxiety and fear. Like I have limited the things I can do a lot by thinking, that I’m not able to do this, or I can’t do that. So then I’ve had to do those kinds of things there in treatment, like being in front of others and talking about my feelings. So that’s the effect they’ve had. ’