Those who relate well with others, do just that in their workplaces--they enjoy the camaraderie of their colleagues, and their customers. Folks who are more task oriented, preferring to involve themselves with skills rather than customers, orient to occupations that are duty-focused. Individuals who would rather control or direct, are most often selected for leadership positions, not wanting to be confined to the day-to-day tasks, nor having to "relate" to folks as their primary goal. These are your three types of workers: "Taskers;" leaders; "relaters."
It generally works this way. Sadly, workers who are in the wrong jobs for their psychological needs, either don't remain there very long, or aren't very effective in terms of performance--let alone occupationally fulfilled. Career preferences chosen according to an individual's psychological needs are as important as any training, schooling, or experience that one encounters.
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The world of disabilities is enormous. Today, people are living longer, managing to survive terrible ordeals, illnesses, and deficits. When an infant or child is too immature to advocate for himself, when a person's physical, mental, or emotional abilities are compromised, when aging takes those properties from people who were at one time, able to function independently but no longer can, there is a dis-ability to participate adequately within the mainstream world.
Providers are called in: Caregivers in all varieties; social workers; healthcare professionals; medical support personnel; educators; job coaches;therapists; advocates; nurses along a wide spectrum of expertise re: special needs; agencies for this function or that.
One of the tragedies, yet all-too-frequent realities for the more "helpless victim" and the "rescuing caregiver" or provider, can be a blur between professional and personal needs on the parts of the caregivers and/or the people who are in charge.
The primary role of the caregiver, in any capacity, is not meant to be a personal one, but a professional one. There are boundaries or limits between client and caregiver; there are duties or executive orders that lie between them. While a caregiver must be compassionate and understanding in his job, the role of a provider primarily is not about being a people person, so much as it is about being a task person. Get the job done, provide comfort and proper care, above all. Duty first. Or the patient can be injured or die. Nurturing, protection, enabling, have their places; however, the caregiver's focus must be objective, and separate from the client or patient, before all personal involvements.
What can happen, when an individual who is primarily a people person (who wants to be friends, pals, a parent or sibling) is placed in the caregiver's dutiful role, and that professional is truly not suited for properly performing regimented tasks and executing details, lines get crossed. The caregiver who is more personally people oriented instead of distanced, disciplined, and objective enough to perform and organize in an exemplary manner, ends up re-focusing his or her own "duties" so that they become more about controlling the patient, rather than seeing to those elements that surround the patient, and support his wellbeing. A kind of guardian effect may occur, where the healthcare professional decides that a personal relationship with the client is more important than the tasks this professional was originally hired to perform: Father knows best? Mother knows best? Nope. Support person knows best. And, that's not okay.
Caregivers, providers, support people, or agencies of any type, can easily slip away from the tasks at hand, and become instead, very people oriented or personally involved with the patient. Thus, the priority of the caregiver is no longer about objective care, but subjectively about the patient needing care that seemingly only the caregiver can provide; that only the caregiver knows how to provide. It creates a dependency, and it validates the caregiver's psychological need to be personally connected, in order to be of value. The tasks the caregiver was originally hired to perform for the patient, become secondary to the caregiver's own psychological needs.
What is potentially worse is the same scenario but where the caregiver becomes a leader, or puts himself in charge of the patient; a role of importance and control, not through a personal relationship, but rather through a kind of executive decision made by the caregiver, himself. This healthcare provider or caregiver, legislates the needs of the particular client or patient to the exclusion of others--including the patient, himself. Control gradually becomes absolute. It is no longer about the patient's receiving objectively evaluated care from a competent task person; all else is subordinated to the caregiver's need to control, commanding others to do what was once the caregiver's actual task-oriented job of scheduling, organizing, and executing specific duties.
The inappropriate shift in roles, in order to fill personal psychological needs, warps a caregiver in whatever capacity; the thrust of that individual toward his client, student, or patient, is no longer a clear, distanced evaluative focus, but rather one of superiority. It's all too easy when tending folks who are challenged in one way or another, to forget about respect, empathy, distancing, boundaries; and to slip into the role of ruler, surrogate parent, or boss. Providers and caregivers, remember, come in all sorts of ancillary job descriptions, when networking the world of healthcare.
People who are caregivers or providers in agency work or on their own; who have more psychological needs than their particular job placement may provide; on a day-in-day-out, year-by-year kind of schedule (particularly with the same clients for extended periods of time); are most susceptible when it comes to slipping out of their assigned duty-oriented careers; rather, they ease into an orientation of control.
Certainly, there are practical reasons that exist for caregivers to have a certain amount of supervisory influence, when people are disabled or challenged; these professionals are presumably trained accordingly, they have experience, and they are familiar with the patient's history in one way or another. It is true that patients often need direction from others, in order to guide and assist themselves.
However, direction is one thing; bullying is quite another.
Simply because a person or agency has done a job for years and years and years; has expertise in his field; has taken responsibility in various areas of his vocation; it does not give him a green light when it comes to taking charge of another person's life, to the exclusion of that individual's personal rights or the rights of others. When it comes to contribution, input, or care that is of significant benefit to a patient or client, there must be shared responsibility between all parties; the professionals must stick to the job descriptions they were meant to carry out.
When any caregiver or support person takes over the rights of a particular individual; when that individual becomes manipulated or less independent as a result of increasing control on the part of that caregiver, what is referred to as "for your own good," is more aptly labeled "ego trip." It speaks to the psychological needs of a healthcare professional or agency gone awry and who has turned away from the tasks that are his responsibility; instead, twisting his job to suit himself, either by creating a too dependent relationship with the client, or by legislating what the client needs or ought to do: Not only so that it ostensibly suits the client, but primarily so that it suits the caregiver's needs to control, as well.
Either way, it's about personal psychological needs trumping job-description. It's about bullying rather than advocating for the patient's right to be treated as normally as possible, and with as much dignity and respect as possible, given his special situation.
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