Stand in the Place Where You Live

When I was a kid during the 1980's, I watched a lot of MTV. It was back when the show had music videos on all the time and this weird quirky new band called R.E.M. was coming up and coming on strong. I liked the simplicity and the pep of their early music. Stand is the one above and the one that's singing in my head right now.

Listening to this song through my social worker goggles after reading the National Association of Social Worker Code of Ethics makes it sound like Michael Stipe is singing about how to be a good social worker. On the surface, one is a happy go lucky song borne from college days making music on the side and the other is a serious and methodically thought out conceptual framework on how to steer social work ethical practice.

Below the surface, they are two parallel flavors that inform each other to make people like me a better social worker by offering me the catchy phrases to worm deep into my psyche and also the theory-rich content with which to hang my hat on at night after a stressful day at the office.

It's funny but it's all true. As social workers, need the heavy content but we also need songs like Stand, to keep the pep in our step.




Also: Honorable mention to Andria Ford for being a die-hard MS fan all these years.

This is Not Art Therapy

Someone used to teach the Art Therapy class. They don't anymore. I am the intern and I had taken a few classes in Expressive Arts Therapies as an undergraduate so I said I would do it. I even have a bunch of art therapy books that have somehow survived the years for reference. I am not a therapist. I am an intern. So it's Process Group instead of Therapy.

I skimmed the texts again and found so many great ideas. For this group though, it would have to be pretty basic. Who knew who would show up, if anyone? I prepped the room with chairs around the table. I also supplied a stack of a handy mandala (circle) I found on the internet that is a wheel divided into pie pieces with words like this on it:

Spirituality

Nurtition

Excercise

Stress

Mastery

Relationships

Finances

Work

Play

Health Care

Environment

Life Purpose

   Self Esteem   

The words are toward the outside of the wheel but still within the circle. The words Self Care are in the very center. Not for any other reason than that they inspired me to think about these aspects of my life.

On the table next to my black and white internet printouts were supplies. Nothing fancy, but the basics. Basics are all you need, if you ask me. My theory is simply that when you let it, the art will come. So it was crayons and pens and pastels and paper.

There is therapy in making art. The process of getting out of your busy little brain to make pretty shapes or disturbing shapes or whatever it is you're making can be a good diversion. 

Since I am not a therapist, I am not asking the people in the group to dialogue with their art to discover what it might be trying to say to them. I am not asking them about the shapes or the use of certain colors in certain places. 

Instead, I grabbed some crayons and paper and got busy coloring a mandala myself. I listened and helped direct the conversation to what was happening right now, helping frame attainable goals to larger dilemmas and simply enjoy the humanizing camaraderie of making art with other people.

It was a good day. 

Boundaries (Updated)

This image of plate tectonics is here not because I am going to write about what happens when one plate rubs against another creating an earthquake, tidal wave or volcanic eruption but to illustrate what can happen with absence of personal boundaries:  A violent shaking, a feeling of being pushed and pulled in opposite directions at the same time, frantic responses to real or imagined crises that seem to demand an immedate response.

My parents have a big garden. When volunteer plants sprout up (the extras that sprout randomly, when not even planted) they are moved them to another place where they have more room to grow, more access to sun and water, space so they don't get so entangled into another plant that both become stifled.

Without proper boundaries, lines blur and the capacity for friction as described above in the plate tectonic example above can manifest in all kinds of unhealthy ways, ways described so beautifully in this blogpost.

I am a firm believer in supporting others in maintaining healthy human boundaries, but I cannot say I have it figured out yet. I am still practicing getting better at saying no. The lines one I have to maintain for my profession can get blurry in a small town but these guidelines are there to respect and protect all parties. 

 

In the context of personal lives, the importance of boundaries is probably pretty obvious. This goes back to my favorite example of not just social worker self care, but self care and personal boundaries in general: 

I am useless to you if I cannot breathe. If I am not taking care of myself, I have nothing to offer you. I don't want to forget. This is a metaphor for everything else. Other smart people tell me I can't transmit what I do not have. Having healthy boundaries is a self-care practice and by practicing this method, I am more likely to be able to be of use to others. 

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.