So, most of you have probably heard how social workers are overly empathic and believe everything they hear? Oh right, you were just in the room, but you didn't see him shoot your wife. Oh, you just had the crack in your urine analysis test, you weren't actually smoking it. Oh okay so maybe you smoked it, but you didn't inhale. Given our previously discussed brilliant training, we were coddled by our professors, so that we in turn coddle our clients. At least this is my philosophy. We are trained to be overly empathic monkeys
(remember the I feel so damn bad for you face) who believe everything that we hear. Speaking of a trickle down effect... Mental health professionals give everyone the benefit of the doubt. At least everyone around me does and it pisses me off.First off, by nature, I am the opposite of this. I don't believe in coddling clients and I believe doing that causes them to be dependent on others for help and eventually smart enough to work a system. I worked with people with developmental disabilities. These people have often been in agencies and systems for a long time that coddled them or assumed they weren't able to do a lot of things for themselves. The truth of the matter is that many of these people were a lot smarter than they let on and were able to fool you into thinking that they couldn't do shit for themselves, when really they were manipulating providers left and right. I worked at an agency that fostered tough love and "self-determination". Get people to help themselves. Don't coddle, don't enable, and moreover, DO NOT assume that people are helpless. Break the cycle. What I found is that (like Jeff on Intervention says- he's my favorite)
http://www.jeffvanvonderen.com/
when you stop the enabling, you make the person accountable for their own behavior and then the problem becomes their own.
As a result, early on in my field placement (as an outpatient substance abuse counselor), I would behave like an attorney or a detective. My old colleagues would jokingly call me "the lawyer" and worked with me to tone it down so I didn't argue with clients. This made sense and I felt like after my first year with substance abuse, I started to get the hang of it and I was also told by my colleagues that I was much improved at being skeptically empathic.
At my most recent job, I would do an assessment, talk about my intuitive response to a client in a team meeting. Usually, I would outline things about their story that "didn't add up". I would then hypothesize on why it didn't add up and postulate if and why they were lying. In response, my supervisor would often defend preferred clients to me. She would state, "oh I've seen that person in group and you're misreading them". So, I've been served. Two months later, we would receive reports that my initial hunch was right- or I made a good call. No credit given to me. Sometimes, my supervisor would even present these "hunches" in front of the "big maccas" (for those of you who don't know Yiddish, this means- the big guys) as her hunches. Not that I'm looking for a medal, but maybe, hey maybe next time we'll think about this employee's suggestions as being a bit more valid. I digress.
So, back to the idea that we all have the wool over our eyes... with one particular client, I was concerned about some "addict behavior" that she was displaying while coming to outpatient treatment after graduating from an inpatient program. 1. She lied on a job application about her felony charges. 2. Her whole housing community thinks she's using. 3. She comes to groups when she feels like it. 4. She has two kids and she's taking them to visit her abusive boyfriend in prison. 5. She splits counselors and avoids individual appointments with me because she knows I'll call her on her shit and goes only to groups with my supervisor-playing good mom bad dad). 6. She talked about wanting to drink at group on her one year anniversary, and missed two groups afterwards. My supervisor justified these six reasons as, "you're too hard on her" or "she told me you cancelled that appointment". So she believed the client over me. Not only that, but the client, who has multiple felonies most likely has a PO who I'm sure is WAY harder on her than I am. And you're argument is that she would confide in you, but just not me. RIGHT!
Ultimately, my supervisor decided that regardless of what happened, that this client should graduate anyway because "she has made some really good progress and had been in treatment for a long time". Wait a second. This person was actually mandated by DHS to be in treatment! She had her children taken away from her for drug use! We put her through treatment and say, ok, you've been in treatment for a year and it doesn't matter if your attendance is consistent as long as you're still kissing the group leader's ass when you are there? When I presented this issue to my clinical supervisor, being extremely diplomatic about not talking trash about my direct supervisor, she would say, "you need to be true to your instincts. You should talk to your direct supervisor about this". No intervention on her part. So, I went back to my direct supervisor and voiced my concerns, once again that "no I don't think this person should graduate yet" and here are 6 legitimate reasons why. I also acknowledged our differences as clinicians and stated, "I realize that this client is splitting us to some extent. I was under the impression that as a primary counselor, I was to be in charge of the ultimate decisions about this person's graduation. If that is not the case, let me know and I'll defer to you". Is this bad communication? No clarification, response or reaction from my supervisor. I was told to talk to my client about my concerns.
What does this make you think about social workers? And, moreover, am I the only one saying something about us? If so, why? How unethical is this? Yet, we are supposed to be ethical people? And if we try to be ethical, we are slammed over the head and repeatedly reminded that we are crazy.
Here's another way to think about believing clients. Let's put ourselves on the other side of the couch. Have you ever been to therapy and told your therapist every little deep and dark secret about yourself? No probably not. According to the Johari Window (one psych reference please? I promise it's a good one), we have four selves. The public self, the private self, the blind self and the undiscovered self. http://changingminds.org/disciplines/communication/johari_window.htm
It is considered, in fact, healthy for people to have a balance between the selves. We all have a private self and it's ok not to reveal all your secrets to anyone and it's good in fact to keep some stuff to yourself.
Now, with that recognized, let's think about some of the criminal minded people that we treat on a regular basis. People who have been arrested for drug dealing, gangs or violent crimes. Are they going to come in and just because we are "nice" to them, tell us everything, break down and have a Robin Williams/Matt Damon scene from Good Will Hunting (you know which one I'm talking about "It's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault"X100, and suddenly Matt Damon has a cathartic moment and breaks down). Apparently, most social workers (no surprise given their training) have this fantasy. Well, I can tell you that it just doesn't happen.
Moreover, the smarter the client, the better they will be at pulling the wool over your eyes. I, for one, have been criticized for being too much on the other side of the table. In fact, my school told me repeatedly that I was too much of a skeptic, too critical and too willing to call people on their shit. Is this a bad thing people? Yes, I'm asking you? Do we need more people who are going to make the "I feel so bad that your father used to torture you with a baseball bat" look or do we need people who are able to tell the difference whether people are just pulling the feel sorry for me card so they can get away with something? Now, I'm not saying that empathy and love doesn't necessarily heal people who just need people (thanks Babs). I'm simply saying that we need to remain a bit skeptical of our clients so as not to look like idiots not only to our clients, but to the rest of the population!
Here's what happens when we are overly empathic.
1. First off, but least important, mental health practioners get a bad rep. Which more and more I am beginning to believe that we deserve. We don't know any better than to coddle our clients.
2. More importantly, we lose credibility with our clients. If they are able to pull our chains constantly, then the client is smarter than you are, game over- you lost. In their eyes. In other words, if we are not smarter than our clients, our clients have no faith in us as authority figures and helpers. Irvin Yalom
http://www.yalom.com/
talks about the fact that we need to walk a fine line between empathy, mystery and authority with clients. Now, don't mistaken this statement as a need to show clients that we are the all knowing, omnicient God figures. Simply that we need to be experts to some extent. Of course Yalom is an MD.
3. It perpetuates societal problems because we are protecting the perpetrators! Another joke if you will...
Two social workers were walking through a rough part of the city in the evening. They heard moans and muted cries for help from a back lane. Upon investigation, they found a semi-conscious man in a pool of blood. "Help me, I've been mugged and viciously beaten" he pleaded.
The two social workers turned and walked away. One remarked to her colleague: "You know the person that did this really needs help."
http://www.workjoke.com/projoke32.htm
This isn't untrue is it?
To prove that mental health providers are enabling perps, Rene Denfeld
(http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781586483098-7)
recently wrote a book exposing street kids in the Pacific Northwest. This book discussed some relevant issues. By the way, I have a huge problem with street kids (which may offend some). First of all, while some of them may have been abused by their parents, it gives them no excuse to run away from home with their pure breed $1500 dogs and sit on the street and hassle hard working people (myself included who just because I dress well, they call me corporate and that I sold out- if only they knew) for money and dog food. Dude. First off, if you are going to run away would you please listen to Russell Simmons and LEAVE THE DOG AT HOME! Don't torture the poor animal whose IQ by the way is about 500X yours and make it starve to death. If you are choosing to be homeless, then take off your designer punk wear (thank you Diesel and Betsy Johnson) and stop bothering me! I have often been tempted to tell their punk asses to get a job. Homelessness is for people with more respectability. In fact, street kids give homeless people a bad name! In urban communities, I have read studies that state that 80% of homeless populations have some form of mental illness. These kids aren't mentally ill. In fact, it is statistically proven that they come from well to do families and choose this lifestyle!
The author did a book signing at Powell's Books (in the heart of the Pearl District in Portland Oregon- Street kid central). She basically blamed local mental health agencies for coddling and enabling street kids to be violent (basically, not making the kids take accountability). In other words, mental health professionals at these agencies are feeling bad for the kids, but don't have enough street smarts and saavy to realize when the wool is being pulled over their eyes. Ultimately, she pissed the hell out of street kids (nice) and she had a great point. Now, don't get me wrong, as you can tell, I have little to no empathy for these kids themselves, but I have less for mental health agencies that try to blame the environment for these kids' violent behaviors! Just because their dad's business was corporate doesn't mean that they have a right to become a non-productive member of society hanging out on the street corner wearing a kilt and complaining about taxes when they never PAY ANY ANYWAY and then murder people!!! It's not okay that social workers and agencies are enabling this kind of behavior.
Words of insight about myself. As you can probably tell, I am a person that works better with clients when I blame the environment for their problems. I don't care if they are rich or poor (I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider that rich people have serious issues too), if they have a legitimate reason to be violent, I can make sense of it. Now that doesn't mean that I'm going to condone it and say oh, god you poor thing, I feel so bad that you had to kill your friend. But I'm simply saying if I can see where someone is coming from, I'll be more likely to be empathic towards them.
This also doesn't mean that I will not work with people that I feel no empathy for. I actually spent 2 years working with such a population. I looked at it as a challenge. Sometimes, it makes your judgment less clouded and you can really be more objective. I just had to watch myself to not be too much of a judgmental bitch. I think I got pretty good at it. According to statistics at my job, I had the highest engagement rate at our branch (which my supervisor would never acknowledge- we'll talk about that in a while). You're thinking- there she goes with her narcissistic ass again. Whatever. If you really think I'm narcissistic, hear me out and then tell me.
This brings me full circle back to my own job. The reason I quit was because I could not see a possible way of making a difference in an agency that was honestly enabling people to continue their current problematic behaviors. I tried for 2 years to make simple changes and it was like banging my head against a wall. I will tell you that I worked with addictions (have 4 years experience in addiction and dual dx) and if the agency continues to condone addict, codependent and unhealthy behavior among staff to create a "battered agency syndrome"
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/16/a3/a5.pdf
then what do we think we are doing to our clients? At what point do we have an intervention on social workers? And who does it?
Here's some food for thought. My current dilemma is that if this is the type of "profession" we work in, how are we any better than criminal defense attorneys who know that their clients are guilty and have to defend them anyway? Well, I guess social workers sleep at night because they play stupid. Or just are. My question though, is when people who really want to help people help themselves (let me emphasize the self-determination over the enabling) and make change, get involved in the profession and see these issues, how can we sleep at night knowing that things like this are going on AND that we are actually a part of it?
Grrr.
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