Hospitals help employees overcome anger, bitterness

In her work as director of clinical social work at Chandler Regional and Mercy Gilbert Medical Centers, Lynda Dallyn often sees the way past hurt and disappointment can leave people filled with anger and bitterness.

Dallyn decided something had to be done to help her co-workers who were carrying these burdens.  So in 2009, she created a forgiveness educational program that allows employees of both hospitals, as well as for Catholic Healthcare West Urgent Care workers, to have an hour alone with her and a hospital chaplain to talk about these painful memories and learn ways to forgive.

The program took off almost immediately.  Already, more than 100 employees have voluntarily participated in the free resource.

About a year ago, Dr. Jason Linder, a board-certified emergency room doctor at both hospitals, replaced the chaplain to join forces with Dallyn.

“People are hanging onto baggage from the past,” Dallyn said, adding that learning how to forgive can help people in both their personal and professional lives.

“I got to thinking that if we can make happy employees, they can really provide better care to patients, and then they will be happy patients.”

Dallyn described how she and Linder use the one-hour session to help and educate the person with whom they are working.

“We tell them how important forgiveness has been in our lives.  We use it every day.  We tell revealing stories about our own forgiveness, and then ask ‘what is your story?’ That is the foundation for the hour,” she said.

The pair also explains the definition of forgiveness, specifying what it means as well as what it does not include.

Dallyn said she and Linder also discuss the consequences of not forgiving, and give the employee tools he or she may use after the session is over.

“Symbolism is very important in forgiveness,” Dallyn said. “So we might suggest blowing up a balloon and drawing the person’s face on it and then letting it go.”

Oftentimes, Dallyn said, forgiving the person who you feel did you wrong also involves forgiving yourself for your own participation in the past problem.

Watching the employee begin to feel empowered about his or her own emotions is very gratifying to Dallyn and Linder.

“I will ask them ‘what is it about you that makes it okay to live with this bitterness and hate? Everyone else has moved on and you are the bully in your own life,’” she said.

“They will then take the power back for themselves that they felt belonged to another person.”

Linder said that his fellow employees have a variety of reasons for wanting to learn to forgive.

“Sometimes it’s because a parent committed suicide or a partner has left them in the lurch,” he said.

Linder said that he, too, has found out first-hand the power of forgiveness.

“I had a good career and was hard driving, and I worked my tail off, but I wasn’t happy.  The emphasis was on the things I had been able to get,” he said.

“I am a country kid from Missouri, so I found a photo of myself when I was younger and back in Missouri, looking happy. I was kind of pissed off that I had left that country kid behind.”

Using that picture as a symbol for what he wanted to become once again, Linder said he was able to let go of what he had done that he did not like, pursue a new level of peace, and move on while focusing on the good things in his life.

“I have two wonderful kids, and people in my life that I’m blessed to have. You have to start each day fresh. You can’t go down the road of bitterness.”

Dallyn said she loves to see how the employees who have taken the forgiveness educational program will begin to look lighter, often both literally and figuratively.

“People will notice a difference in you when you live like this,” she said. “We have had people leave here who have then dropped weight. They are happier and they walk with a spring in their step.

“As a woman who did the program told me several days later, ‘Lynda, you give us hope.’”