Professional Use of Self

I missed class this week due to yet another sinus infection. While blessedly not cancer, is still a major hindrance to living my daily life. I am sorry to sound glib about huge issues. It is a flawed coping skill that helps me retain my sense of humor. I hope that is ok and if not you will say so. Then I can grow and learn and we can establish a rapport or whatever they call it.
 
While on the couch literally crying in pain with sinus pressure, my class was "happening" online with my fellow MSW students from all over CA and points beyond. The subject of the class was on the Professional Use of Self.

The Power Point slides were extensive and the conversation full. I know this because I watched "class" afterward as it had all been captured for me to go find when I was in less pain. So I did and what I found was a classroom full of great conversations about classmates experiences, professors perspectives and some great slides referencing specifically Carl Rogers. 

Carl Rogers is known as an influential American psychologist and is considered to be one of the founders of the humanistic approach (or client-centered approach) to psychology. For full analysis I encourage you to look to this website or even his Wikipedia site.

In addition to many other successes and contributions, Rogers is known for practicing "unconditional positive regard," which is understood as acceptance of a person, without negative judgement of that person's worth. 

Pretty revolutionary thinking for the 1950s and it was further developed into a client-centered therapeutic model (also translated to student-led educational models) as described in this interesting diagram that I certainly did not create.

Carl Rogers was only part of the discussion in "class." The other part was the title of this blog. What is and why would you want to use yourself professionally? This is in relation to self disclosure, acknowledging what barriers there are if that is part of where the client wants to go and remaining authentic while not bowling someone over with personal tale after personal tale. 

In my professional life as it is developing, it is tricky to remain available and authentically who I am while also remaining open to others with completely different worldviews and yet this is the role of a social worker. Not to be what everyone might want, but to be as accessible to the stories that need to be told so issues can be solved. 

I also feel that I cannot be any help to anyone if I do not acknowledge my own flaws. I may have had one set of experiences and read a few things but it does not make me an expert on anyone's life or their experience. Some people want to meet you. Others don't. I am learning to make myself available but not chase people around. I might not be the best fit for someone either. Other than that, lately THESE are what I try to keep in mind:

 Both in and out of work. 

Until next time. Cheers!

  

Give Us Your Good Advice

Back in Middle School, someone on the yearbook committee wrote that my future profession was going to be 'Peace Activist.' At the time it seemed pretty weak considering one of my best buddies was written in to be a much cooler sounding 'Tattoo Artist.'

These both seemed highly unlikely at the time, albeit interesting. The facts remain however. I am a social work student and case manager for a housing program for homeless folks and that friend of mine turned out to be an acupuncturist. Ha. I realize they are not the same things but along the same lines, perhaps. 

The point is, what is it that propels any of us through our barriers to make use of opportunities that come our way?

Rollins has a good story about a choice he made and what happened because of it.

 

Baz has lots of advice on what to do, how and why. It's set to pretty music and have nice imagery.

 

This Oriah poem is one I have posted printed before. Here is a new version of it. I don't need to really know if you will get up in the middle of the night to help the children, but I think it's a good thing for all of us to ask ourselves. 

What are we willing to do? How committed to ourselves, our goals are we? If you are reading this, these are questions for you. What makes you stick with what you are working on?

It's time for a National Intervention

Have you ever wondered what you could to help take action against corporate greed?

National Intervention is a campaign for this purpose. These are some of the basic understandings of this campaign:

 

- Understanding that corporations are not people

- Money is not speech

- Only publically funded elections are not corrupted by moneyed    interests 

 

The focus is to view corporate greed through the lens of an addictive lens and treat it as one would treat someone suffering from an addiction.

This morning I had the good fortune to be tuned in to KBOO, a Community Radio station out of Portland, OR. This morning,  Executive Director, Scott Silber of National Intervention was giving an interview with the radio staff. Mr. Silber sums up the campaign:

"Understanding each of our roles in the addiction system, choosing what our own relationship to those addicted to corporate power will be, that any of this no-brainer amendment work is a sobriety checkpoint and that an intervention is our best chance at banding together for recovery before it's too late."

I am also adding a video that is also on the  National Intervention website because it's important and videos bring it home in a way words might not.

Please friend the Intervention on facebook and follow them on twitter and give support in any other way you are able because the cause is worthy and talk is cheap but campaigns are not.

Self Care: Not Just a Platitude

It was a simple training day today at work. We were going over company policies, programs, protocol while also doing some indirect team-building.

I was asked to give a short "something" about self care and when I told my partner (boyfriend) of nearly two years this, he laughed out loud. Humpf. He was laughing at the irony of me teaching a class on Self Care. The nerve. However, he has a point. I am not great at it. Self care is a moving target and sometimes I can't seem to catch up with it. Maybe next week I will get to that stuff. Meanwhile, there are important things to take care of. Or are there?

Case in point, last week when I came down with a cold and instead of cancelling THIS, I went anyway and then pranced around SF for a couple days, turning in my first paper for the semester from my hotel room while coughing and taking both Albuterol and Alka Seltzer Plus cold to function properly.

Needless to say, right after our training day today, I hopped over to the clinic where my practitioner told me, "You have another sinus infection." I knew I needed an antibiotic because the medicine I had been taking wasn't doing anything anymore. I was still weak, shaky and cloudy-brained.

I asked him what I could do to stop showing up in his office with this same story. He works in a clinic and he sees all kinds so I figure by default he must be some kind of Allopathic ninja. Surely he has some secret he can tell me, something revolutionary that will change how I operate. He shrugs and says, "Some people are more prone to these things but eating right and exercising and taking good care of yourself can't hurt." 

So self care. It is the image of the flight attendant telling you to put the oxygen mask on oneself before putting it on your kid. It is knowing you can't transmit something you haven't got. The irony of my teaching this self care section of the staff training today was to highlight my own weak spots and in so doing, letting me revisit how they can be strengthened. 

Self care seems like it might be selfish but it is the selfish one who runs themselves ragged because they are of no use to others. Hopefully with this public announcement (humiliation) I will begin to change my ways. I will keep you posted.

Bad Recommendations

I was checking my email today. I subscribe to a bunch of online newsletters. I recently subscribed to this one. The Icarus Project has a lot of things it presents and promotes but the what catches my eye and seems glaringly dangerous is the part where they encourage psychiatric patients how to get off their medicines.

The website has a Food not Bombs hand-holding a carrot logo and the art that reflects hours spent in an Indy Music store. I fit their demographic. I do encourage you to check out this website. I also encourage a dialogue about this article concerning the cessation of psychiatric medicines for people suffering from mental illnesses. 

What I do like about this website is the positive bent on how they view people who think in more creative ways. At the same time, it's not as if it could be as simple as The Man making medicines in order to keep you complacent. It isn't that simple.

If I were an medical doctor & I am not, I would tell anyone suffering from mental health symptoms to yes, talk to an psychiatrist, maybe with a neurology background and find the smartest and most trusted counselor they could find. I would tell them to confide in their dear friends and of course don't Just take pills. Don't be a passive consumer of your mental health. (Or anything else.) Use any tools you can find from mood-tracking Apps to journaling, creative expression, exercise, etc. Whatever works, do it. And don't forget to get some sleep.

I want to hear what you think about this, though. 






 

Homelessness as a Thinking Pattern

Who doesn't love a chart that classifies the logic, the thinking and the writing patterns of large groups of people? You know you love them. You must. I know I do. I am always in search of something short, easy to remember and true. Life gives us so darn many variables that I find it's nice to have a few simple truths. I am not sure if these are them, but Dunlap (Patterns of Thinking, 2009) specifies differences in logic and thinking and writing to people from certain areas.

I am fascinated by charts and codes that print out easily grasped outlines of generalities. As compelled to these charts as I might be, I also see the shape of what they are not saying. In art class, we learned to make notans. We learned that what is not there is just as important as what is there, in forms of images.  

Signposts are helpful to avoid cliffs and to remind you which direction you're headed but honestly instead of these types of musings or academic debates about the history of social work policy all I can think about is my homeless clients at work and how what I am reading can impact them, does it impact them and in what way.

All I can think about is the lack of services for people who are the most vulnerable. My pattern of thinking isn't just English (or American as Dunlap would have specified, due to my origins). Like everyone, my pattern is not that simple. We do not fit into spreadsheets no matter how hard we might wish we did.

I am stuck on the absence of what is present. Both what is there and what is not there are equally important, as we learned from the notan. There is much to be learned and grown in the vacant spots where there is no shape yet built. 

I want to hand out answers to the questions life asks me and yet all I have are more questions on which I perseverate. Such as this one. How can I work with the homeless and not be acutely aware (read: tormented) of what I (we) cannot (do not) offer them?

When someone is homeless, it can be a personal source of shame. They sometimes also wear it as a badge of pride. People become so adjusted to living out that they feel like a caged animal even sometimes just thinking about the idea of living under a roof. Mental illness, drug addiction, domestic violence, scars from before their trip to homelessness and scars gathered on the road become huge barriers to shifting the focus. It's not as simple as just finding a place to live in most cases.

You don't have to be homeless to have this thinking pattern of lack, either. Any of us can manifest feelings of unworthiness, self-defeat and why bother. We must persevere, even when we're too tired.

So, like all the other thinking patterns described in Dunlaps's pretty charts, I think we need to take this with a grain of salt. Though the notan shows us two sides, it isn't this or that so much as this and that.



Also, if you did not already click on the "too tired" link above, I encourage you to do so. It is a poem called The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer and it's beautiful.





  

Not About Balance

The assignment was to make a list of right brain and left brain traits and think about balancing them. I did the assignment. I created a table and in the ledger plugged in the traits for each that I see myself having. Halfway through it was very clear I am much heavier in the right brain traits and though I crave and seek out opportunities and even surround myself with people who are heavier in the left brain traits.

This is funny because in my family, I am known as the one who organizes things. Maybe it's because I have had to teach myself to compensate for my heavily weighted non-linear skills. 

I think these types of processes are interesting to be aware of but my job as I see it, is not to try and be more of something I am not but to accept myself for who I am more and more in every way. With that, I also want to help encourage others to be and accept themselves in every way. 

There is no way I can be something I am not and maintain any level of sanity. This ideal of balance that is so popular these days seems to have been best used for pirates when they measured their gold. 

As much as I want to shoot for balance, I don't see that happening. After meditation and trying to eat right and pray right and practice practice practice I am still merely human. I vacillate from one side to the other, just like everyone. The best I can hope for when thinking of balance is to cut myself some slack for being exactly who I am and try to learn from the knees I skin as I jog through life.

Cheers to the humans who struggle!