Identity and Learning

As I read through the book Radical Pedagogy Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation, I can’t help but conduct some soul searching with regards to my life choices.  The book is very interesting and I find myself analysing my family members, my children, my friends, the list is endless.  I feel like my brain has been jump started, maybe even high jacked, the problem is my thoughts are in so many different directions that I can’t seem to focus on one thought.  However, I found the following thought cited in  Bracker’s book extremely interesting.  James Gilligan states “People will sacrifice anything to prevent the death and disintegration of their individual or group identity “ (as cited in Bracker, 2006 P. 3)  What a powerful statement…..people will sacrifice anything?   Really?

A few years ago I was hired by the Workers Compensation Board (WCB) to adjudicate claims related to Chronic Pain benefits.  This was a challenging job given the Regulations and guidelines but it was challenging because the client needs were unique.  The definition of chronic pain as defined by the WCB Act and Regulations is somewhat different than how the medical community would define Chronic Pain. According to the WCB Regulations:  

"chronic pain" means pain

(i) continuing beyond the normal recovery time for the type of personal injury that precipitated, triggered or otherwise predated the pain; or

(ii) disproportionate to the type of personal injury that precipitated, triggered or otherwise predated the pain,

and includes chronic pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndrome, and all other like or related conditions, but does not include pain supported by significant, objective, physical findings at the site of the injury which indicate that the injury has not healed;

In the simplest of explanations chronic pain is pain that is experienced when there is no objective, physical finding to explain the pain.  For example, a person sustains an injury, the injury heals, yet they continue to experience debilitating pain to the point that a person’s daily activities of living are affected and, in some cases, they can no longer work or enjoy life.

Many of the clients I dealt with had not worked for many years.  In most cases, clients at this stage would identify themselves as “broken” and see themselves as never being able to return to work or have any kind of quality of life. It has been my experience, that some clients became so entrenched in a lifestyle of “I can’t” that they would seek out any form of feedback that would enforce “I can’t.” For example, if a client saw a doctor and the doctor recommended the client return to work, the client often would seek a second opinion.  If the second opinion was given and it was the same, the client could return to work, the client would seek a third opinion.  Very often, medical opinions would be sought until a doctor was willing to say that the client was not capable of returning to work.  The client would only endorse the doctor who stated he/she could not return to work. No matter the credentials of the other doctors, who stated the client could return to work, the client would only believe that one doctor who would enforce their identity of being “broken” and would refer to the other doctors as “quacks” or “paid off by WCB.

Some clients became so entranced with this “broken” identity that it was difficult to get them to participate in rehabilitation.  Programs were introduced by WCB to assist clients in improving their quality of life by teaching the client how to live with pain.  Clients would resist participation in these programs.  Bracker states…  “That learning, like all other behaviour, is motivated by the effort to maintain and enhance identity means, first, that for learning to occur, either the process or the anticipated result of learning must provide support for identity in some way.”  (Bracher, 2006 P.5) For me, this statement supports why attempts to provide programs to clients living with chronic pain were not well received as their identity was interfering with their ability to learn. Even if the goal of the program was to improve quality of life, the client was not open to these programs because it did not support their identity.

In referring back to James Gilligan statement cited in Bracker’s book “People will sacrifice anything to prevent the death and disintegration of their individual or group identity “(as cited in Bracker, 2006 P. 3) I would have to state, in this circumstance, I have witnessed people willing to give up the possibility of a better quality of life because it threatened their identity of being broken. In retrospect I wish I would have had this insight when I was dealing with these clients as I may have had a better understanding of their challenges.    

References

Bracher, M. (2006). Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillian

Workers’ Compensation Board, Workers Compensation Act. (2004). Chronic Pain Regulations: Retrieved from http://www.gov.ns.ca/just/regulations/regs/wocchron.htm