While doing massage and polarity work through the Comfort Care program at Bay Ridges, Winbourne Park, and Thortonview over the last two years, Haffey would frequently respond to expressions of anger, sadness or anguish with a “desire to fix.”

“When I first started the impulse was to change the way somebody was feeling,” says Haffey.

She says that her old approach was summed up in the sentiment - “You don’t need to feel like that.”

This approach of diversion or intervention wasn’t always effective, though, namely because the person couldn’t fully express themselves or work through the emotions consuming them.

An encounter with a regular client at Bay Ridges last week showed her the importance of being completely receptive, of listening and not attempting to alter a person’s mood.

The resident, a man who has been in long term care for a year, was frustrated, asking to leave the home. Haffey, who had just finished massaging a client, walked down the hall and asked if she come in to his room. At first declining, eventually he said she could sit down. After asking him if there was anything she could do to help, Haffey decided to stay silent.

“I was resisting the impulse to say something,” she says.

Slowly, the man began to “vent,” she says, with anger giving way to an underlying sadness.

“I just sat with his anger and tears,” she says, “and any movement would have interrupted his process.” After working through his feelings the resident began to talk of his love of dancing and he invited Haffey back to see him the following week.

It is important to be a witness, says Haffey.

“The best thing is to be with someone in whatever place they are in.”

Trying to talk someone out of what they are feeling can block - rather than help them release - their emotions, she says.

“I learn so much from those experiences,” she says. “So often we want to talk people out of situations – and that interrupts the process of someone coming through something.”

Although Haffey has done in-services – most recently at the Durham Region Hospice and Palliative Care conference – on the Comfort Care program, she has no plans to develop formal training around what she calls “the witnessing process,” rather, she hopes to incorporate it in her work more completely.

“Its part of the tool-kit I carry with me,” she says.

“It’s about being with the whole person,” she says. “As soon as we start dividing a person up, we stop being with their whole being.”