OK You asked for it...
A HARD ACT TO FOLLOW
WARNING: Do not read this if you have a weak stomach…
They say the worst thing for a performer is to follow children or animal shows. Well, Michael may have that beat! He was asked to present his most popular program on dealing with stress and preventing burnout, "The Art of Taking Care of Yourself ™," to the Emergency Nurses Association in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada.
Michael does a lot of programs for health care groups but this one was unusual, to say the least. As he often does, Michael arrived early at the convention and tried to catch as many of the speakers as possible. (He does this so he has a better feeling for the event and so that he can relate his presentations to other previous speakers’ presentations. This helps make him a team player, adds value to his presentation and congruence to the entire conference!)
Michael listened to two speakers before he went on. First, there was the police officer who spoke on domestic violence and child abuse. She talked about violent tendencies of batterers and the "cycle of violence" that women typically go through. She told how these men take advantage of their wives and girlfriends, and trap them into a feeling of helplessness. She shared detailed descriptions of near fatal and fatal violence perpetrated upon these women. Having worked at starting a domestic violence shelter in his hometown, and facilitating several groups for battered women (something most men never get the opportunity to experience)… Michael was uniquely aware of this information. However, he did start to worry about how his humor, warmth, and introspective material would follow such harsh information. And frankly, he started to worry about his "maleness" in a 100% female group! But that wasn’t the worst part…
The second speaker was a coroner from the hospital. She had full color slides of babies who had been murdered by their parents! She showed the bodies and how to identify accidental scalding from "on purpose" scalding! The slides were explicit, grotesque, and sickening! She showed and described common ways parents kill their babies. Strangely, the nurses didn’t seem to be phased by the slides or the discussion. Michael, on the other hand, was sick! The nurses watched, listened, asked questions… as Michael stood in the shadows of the back of the room and wept silently. Although the tears flowed, Michael kept his whimpering quiet – and no one knew how it all affected him.
When the coroner finally finished her talk, Michael had only five minutes to prepare for his presentation. How was he going to follow this? How was his message going to be received by these women… how was he going to be received?
Michael thanked the presenter that had just finished and took the stage. He looked out at the women sitting there and swallowed hard – trying to forget the images he had just seen on the screen behind him. He stood straight and asked these emergency nurses, "How many of you have ever experienced burnout?" Immediately, they all broke out in laughter and raised their hands – and Michael knew it would be all right.
Michael offered this audience practical tools to "take care of themselves" and they ate it up. During the presentation, they were either furiously taking notes or vocalizing their approval.
During a particularly poignant story where Michael talks about how to take the pain in our lives and make it into an advantage, he noticed several women wiping their eyes! Then it hit him… these women were not hardened because of all the horror they see in their jobs; they had just learned to "go through the motions" so that they could do their job. Occasionally, they needed permission to cry, to feel again, and to have someone to say, "It’s ok to feel."
What Michael had thought was the worse fit for him and his talk, turned out to be the best fit. Whether we are emergency nurses, doctors, teachers, counselors or parents… sometimes we stop taking care of ourselves because we have to take care of "everybody else"! Michael’s program reminded these nurses that if they want to take care of "everybody else," they must first take care of themselves!
One nurse told Michael that his presentation took her on a roller coaster of emotions… sometimes she wanted to laugh … sometimes she wanted to cry … and sometimes she did! It turned out to be a real cathartic release for everyone. After his talk and during the meal, the planner asked the entire conference, "Can you imagine a better speaker to follow the coroner?" They all gleefully laughed and shouted back, "NO!" Michael thought that was very odd because he considered her a "hard act to follow!"