Coming to RISE was meant to be
Jamie Sumner started working at RISE last year as a trainee clinician. In December he finished a degree in Counselling where part of his study included a placement with the Male Room in Nelson.
“I’ve probably logged more than 300 volunteer hours there over the last couple of years and only some of those were for my degree. The other hours were done on my own, willingly, because there was so much to do with the men and boys I worked with.”
Jamie says he didn’t think RISE was the right place for him as a post-degree option. However, he says now he thinks coming to RISE was meant to be.
“I spent time counselling men from their teens to their 60s. Some just went through a difficult break up and they didn’t know how to handle the hurt or the loneliness. There were fathers going through the court system over access to their children and managing parenting agreements. So many men and youth were anxious and frustrated about their lives. A lot of these circumstances manifested outwardly in anger, the ‘go-to emotion’ for men. They didn’t know how to deal with the anger.”
At RISE, Jamie connected that anger to the men attending the Non-Violence Programme. He heard how the anger turned into violence. He heard men talk about their trauma and abuse. He understood better what the future of those men and boys from the Male Room if nothing was changed.
“There’s an emotional toll on these men that we don’t often see because they don’t let us see it. They are socialised to not be emotional. They don’t learn the language of emotions and so they don’t express themselves. But all those feelings are under the surface. And I know for certain all of them want to be heard, they just don’t know how to speak the language of hurt.”
Jamie says he did a lot more listening at the Male Room than talking, so he knows that once someone starts opening up, they find their voice.
“At the start I talk about the range of emotions and we work on naming them and identifying them. I say to them, ‘you’re allowed to be afraid, sad, hurt, and happy.’ We work on developing this emotional awareness. Once we start talking and they tell you what’s going on in their lives, I can see they start to get it. Lightbulbs go off.
“Thankfully I see the younger guys have more of this emotional awareness than the older generations. That’s positive.”
However, Jamie is concerned about younger men too.
“They are still being prepared to be at the top of the pecking order in society, and that is not how our society operates any longer. We have to pay more attention to these boys to get them ready to develop into men for this era, for this time.”
Jamie acknowledges that he has done work himself to develop his own emotional awareness and that gives him a greater understanding about what his clients are going through. He is going to use his personal and professional development in his volunteer work with the Male Room, which he intends to continue now that his degree his complete.
“I feel connected to the people who go there for help. I also feel connected to the experienced counsellors there who helped me develop. They do incredible work there and I learned so much. I’m still learning from them actually.”
From the Male Room, Jamie brought to RISE an incomplete portrait of men of all ages struggling to speak about anger, anxiety, and emotions. At RISE, Jamie is understanding a deeply informed view of trauma that completes the portraits.
“It’s so clear to me now that we need to know, to hear the back story of what has led people to use violence. Meeting these men where they are at, like I did at the Male Room, is the start of a healing process. Coming to RISE was exactly what I needed in this part of my life and career.”