Anna Marie Batelaan is a social worker at Holland Bloorview who works with children who have a brain injury as a result of trauma or illness—and their families. She provides emotional counselling and helps families connect with resources. “We recognize the whole family is impacted,” she says. “With acquired brain injury, the child is usually developing typically, and the brain injury has turned their life upside down.” One of the tools Anna Marie uses with parents is mindfulness meditation. She and social worker Dagmara Urbanowicz are bringing a new mindful self-compassion program to staff in the fall.
BLOOM: How did you get into this field?
Anna Marie Batelaan: I’ve always been interested in giving back and helping others. My first social work jobs were working with young offenders in a group home, and working with homeless women. My dad was an engineer with the National Research Council who made aids for people with disabilities. He worked closely with what was then the Hugh MacMillan Centre. My sister is a social worker and my brother is a fireman. We do a lot of helping in my family.
BLOOM: How would you describe your job?
Anna Marie Batelaan: Social workers do a lot. We’re there to help navigate young people and their families through the system. We help them understand the impact of brain injury now, and what they need to think about as they get older. We look at the big picture of things. We do a lot of emotional counselling to help them cope and adjust and move forward with their lives. We also provide them with funding resources and supports in the community.
BLOOM: What are the joys?
Anna Marie Batelaan: I find it extremely rewarding when families and young people come back to tell me how they’re doing. Last summer, one of my first clients, who I saw here when he was nine, came back at age 27. He wanted to visit and tell me what he was up to, and was thinking about volunteering here. It’s seeing young people and their families find a way forward that is still going to bring them a lot of happiness and joy. It’s being able to be a small part in their recovery at a time when they need help.
BLOOM: What are the challenges?
Anna Marie Batelaan: In health care we’re often asked to do more with less, and that can be a challenge when you know that what you’ve done in the past was really successful. For example, we used to be able to visit people in their homes and spend the time they needed to help with their adjustment on the outpatient side. Often it's six to 12 months after going home from hospital that people realize the brain injury is not going away. Home visits allowed us to see more easily how they were coping, and were very appreciated by the families. But when we changed our model of service delivery, we stopped doing home visiting, because we’re so busy with inpatients.
BLOOM: What emotions do you experience on the job?
Anna Marie Batelaan: The whole wide range of emotions. We’re here for the tears and sadness, but also for the laughter and excitement and joy of progress. Sometimes frustration comes up as well.
BLOOM: How do you cope with the emotional side of work?
Anna Marie Batelaan: I have strong mindfulness and compassion-based practices. I’m in my 10th year of mindfulness, and I’ve done self-compassion practices for three years. That’s helped me to really be there for myself. I’ve learned how to soothe myself in difficult emotional times, but still be present for clients and families. I’m not perfect. We all ‘fall off the cushion,’ as they say. But you’re kinder and gentler to yourself, and you’re able to get back on.
BLOOM: What are the practices that you do?
Anna Marie Batelaan: I do a formal daily practice of sitting on a cushion and doing a breath practice or a body scan or a loving-kindness meditation.
I think I’m getting much better at informal practice, where I catch myself in the moment and stop and take a breath and ground myself. I often do a three-minute breathing space in the transition between one client and another, so I can let go of what I was working on with one client, and be set up to work with the next one. There’s research now showing that clinicians who stop and do that have better outcomes with their clients and families, even though they aren’t aware that you’ve done it.
BLOOM: You and Dagmara recently took some training. Can you describe that?
Anna Marie Batelaan: It’s called Intensive Mindful Self-Compassion Teacher Training, and it was the first time it was offered in Ontario. It’s an international protocol started by Kristin Neff and Chris Germer. It’s training to lead an eight-week group where you teach compassion-based practices. These are compassion-based practices that involve mindfulness, self-kindness and common humanity.
BLOOM: How would you describe each component?
Anna Marie Batelaan: I like Jon Kabat Zinn’s definition of mindfulness. He says it’s paying attention, with intention and without judgment, to the present moment. It’s not getting caught up in worries of the future or thinking about the past.
Self-kindness is how we approach ourselves with more kindness and appreciation and care. The common humanity is that we’re not alone in this. All of us struggle, we all have challenges, and when we can recognize that, we can allow ourselves to take better care of ourselves.
BLOOM: Have your thoughts about disability changed in the 18 years you’ve been here?
Anna Marie Batelaan: I don’t think they have changed much. My views were shaped by my dad, who worked with so many people with disabilities. He would show me paintings by people who had painted with their toes, and I’d say ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’ He came into my grade school for Show and Tell and talked about the aids he designed. One was where you blew threw a straw to type.
BLOOM: What have you learned from the families you work with?
Anna Marie Batelaan: Families continue to teach me every day. They’re amazing in how resilient they are and how they take care of their children and find a way forward. If I was in their shoes, would I have the same amount of resiliency?
I like it when we do groups with families and they can share and learn with each other. The best way forward for families is to hear from another family: ‘This is the way you might want to try it.’
BLOOM: Do we run a group like that?
Anna Marie Batelaan: Right now there’s a parent group that runs at the same time as our Helping Hand constraint-induced camp for kids. It brings together inpatients and outpatients—and even outpatients from five to 10 years ago. We have themes and discussion, but the best piece is the learning they get from each other. It’s neat. They walk away feeling like there are common threads in all their experiences. They come from all over Ontario, and often stay in touch on e-mail or with FaceTime and texting.
BLOOM: Why did you decide to bring mindfulness to our parents and staff?
Anna Marie Batelaan: I’d been practising on my own and found it so helpful that I wanted to share the benefits. Five-and-a-half years ago I began a mindfulness group for inpatient parents. It ran for about five to six months and then staff starting asking me if I’d do one for them.
BLOOM: What do parents and staff tell you they get from these sessions?
Anna Marie Batelaan: They say they’re better able to be present, to take care of themselves, to regulate their emotions and make better decisions. Research shows that when you’re present, you’re happier.
Research also shows that 47 per cent of the time we’re not focused on what we’re doing, and when we’re not focused, we’re pretty unhappy.
BLOOM: Why is mindfulness and self-compassion important for parents of children with brain injury?
Anna Marie Batelaan: A lot of parents put their child first and they’re way down on the priority list, to the point that they’re not taking care of their basic needs—sleeping, eating well, or even taking breaks from the bedside. Mindfulness and self-compassion can help them start looking at what’s happening to them, and to understand that they need to take care of themselves in order to better take care of their child.
BLOOM: How have you changed as a clinician since you began mindfulness?
Anna Marie Batelaan: I think I’m calmer. In the past, I felt my emotions could take over sometimes, and I felt more anxious. Now I can be more present for myself and others. I'm better able to look at what I need to accomplish in a day, and I prioritize my work easier. I feel I can be a better listener and speaker—as far as choosing what I say and how I say it. I think I’m a better colleague.
BLOOM: Can you talk about the new mindful self-compassion group for staff?
Anna Marie Batelaan: Compassion is one of our founding values at Holland Bloorview. But to be compassionate, we have to complete that circle of compassion by being kind to ourselves. That’s where it starts.
The course will be three hours a week over eight weeks. We’ll look at how to work with our inner critic, how to become our closest ally, and how to better be able to be there for our clients, colleagues and our own families.
BLOOM: Can you describe one of the practices?
Anna Marie Batelaan: One of the ones I like best is the self-compassion break. You learn how to work with a small difficulty and, as you gain the skills, you can apply it to the bigger challenges in your life. It’s a way to deal with the pain that all of us carry within ourselves.
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