Oh wow, it’s that rare morning blog because I fell asleep at 6PM yesterday and have therefore been up since about 2AM. I need to rush this and get moving as I still work today and get to see The Punch Brothers and Bela Fleck this evening.
Yesterday, two of my clients were in crisis. This is one way of describing
their negative experience that was imploring me to help or fix. One seemed to
be flirting with suicide after his recent relapse doubled-over on itself the
last few weeks, causing his wife to leave him. The other was in a horrific
accident, breaking several bones and requiring multiple surgeries and plates to
repair. Both have been without their medication.
When I said recently that I didn’t know what I was built for, I can’t recall if
I alluded to working the sensitive power dynamics of DCS, but the situations
that arose today are analogous. People, literally begging, me to be the only
one who can help them. You stay patient as they cuss. You hear the hopelessness
and exhaustion in their voice. You find the words to downplay the insistence
that they consider you a “friend.” You make sure to not enable the self-pitying
dialogue that feeds escalation.
And on an entirely different level, I’m just turned off by the whole thing. The
frustration I think a lot of people have with addicts is that, when times aren’t
so dramatic and out of control, the actual work of getting better gets ignored.
Then, a crisis hits, and it’s not just bad, but it’s almost perfectly situated
to target and try to tear down those who are trying to help. No one can do the
work for you, and sometimes the work is finding the civility to suffer as
though you have any respect for how you can make others do so.
I feel angry when people who have, seemingly dozens of reasons, to better
themselves or push and try harder, fall off quicker than I might in service to
something “dumb” or “simple” like amassing “fuck you” points or engaging in
some other form of indulgence. The amount of effort and energy it takes to be a
dramatic whirlwind of chaos that sucks everyone else up into you would be
impressive if it weren’t a disaster.
This is where I think people so unfairly pigeon-holed me in describing my “negativity”
years ago. What did I do with all of my negative commentary or sentiment? Show
up, work, build, and look for a way out. I invited the conversation still no
one wishes to have. I didn’t destroy myself with an eye towards bringing you
down with me. I say a fair amount of forlorn and angsty despotic things, but I
hold no genuine pity for myself or situation until I’m incredibly sick. I’m always
looking for the way out, the joke, or the opportunity to genuinely address or
fix whatever the problem is.
And I don’t know how to conceive of that propensity as anything more than a
choice first. If an addict is simply someone who can’t conceive of themselves
as making choices, it’s perhaps more innocent when the behavior reaches aberrantly
destructive and hateful places. One then must wonder if they are capable of
choosing their apologies, choosing the occupations under which to work
themselves to death, or choosing to “reduce harm” in signing up for a program that
has a remote chance of obligating them towards practices that enable mindful
choices.
The “saints” and “I couldn’t do what you do-ers are hailed for their patience and
compassion. There’s a routine “thank you for your service” kind of pageantry
when people learn that you’re in counseling or other forms of social work.
People know, deeply, how much they’re their own kind of addict or infinite
excuse-making and selfish being, and that core belief prompts a reflexive burst
of “thank you!” or “good on ya!” guilt management system response. So many in
the field have been victimized themselves, and whether they actually know how
to or not, they want to prevent others from going through what they had to, or
give them tools that worked for them.
But there’s a mismatch. People have to go through, in a most important sense,
things alone. You have to discover what it means and feels like to choose
something. You have to own your pain and feelings. The “tools” for doing so
manifest as you exercise the incorporative and corrective behavior. I’m
practicing patience and processing and “coping with anger” as I write this.
Waves of calm or resolution wash over me when I finish something that needed said.
When I want to break, I say so, and like “magic” that breaking point turns into
fuel for the spite engine or clarity that allows me to go eat or start my day.
This is work. This is at least the 1,017th time I’ve worked on my
patience, anger, angst, judgmental attitude, and perspective that makes me want
to burn everything down and pretend something “new” is in fact that or
worthwhile. I don’t just recognize there’s a difference between my mirror-neurons
reaction and my choices, I’m literally practicing the differentiated nature of
my being as I type.
The social work field is a place where you have to exist in the suspended state
of your uneven clients. They don’t know who they are or what they’re capable of.
They have strong conceptions of what they can destroy, lie about, or how power
can only work against them. And you have to press right up against them and
whisper about the thousand competing narratives and opportunities every moment
a mere choice away. When they swing so wildly the opposite direction, it’s hard
not to think less of them than you might your pet. What kind of wild animal
doesn’t just charge its caretaker, but does so as a matter of routine or pride?
What kind of animal kills itself?
How many of you have occupied a role in which people have begged you? I
remember begging my mom not to gut my stuffed-animal friend. I associate that
level of helplessness with one of the most severe trauma-inducing moments of my
life. I was also like 4 or 5, and the argument about how helpless I genuinely
was could hold up. Is that what these situations ask of me? Am I to reduce
people to helpless children in how I conceive of what I might do to “help?”
Does that not feel incredibly perverse or egotistical?
No one resolved my situation but me. I talked about it. I joked about it. I
wrote about it until I no longer had an emotional response when thinking about
it. I feel the hollowness and echo of how cold the world can be, and arm myself
with the knowledge that it’s there and ready for when I need it. I don’t
operate from a place that everyone I meet is ready to kill me or my friends. I
don’t pretend like isolated horrors tell a comprehensive story of my being or humanity.
This, again, begs the question of what to make of any individual’s awareness
and approach to their addiction or “addiction” broadly as a concept.
I conceive of most people as addicted to bullshit. They can’t help but abscond
with the truth; they do it fluidly and reflexively. They lie like they breathe
and then lie about others’ ability to see it. They’re addicted to silence. It’s
the first clue you’re full of shit when you can’t talk about everything right
or wrong with you. Or, more insidiously, you only talk about what’s wrong with
you as deep cover for bullshitting yourself about the responsibility you won’t
take to do better. The endless rehearsed reiteration of all the past drama gets
stuck on repeat. “The only reason” you do this or that pretending to be
reasonable. I feel most powerful in the moments you betray how full of shit you
are, and it’s why I have almost no respect for authority. It’s incredibly rare
to hear someone talk with measured qualifying statements verses proud pontificating
of “the rules” or their righteousness letting ignorant dictums do the work
instead of practicing accountability.
I hate conceiving of the positive things my clients tell me as lies. It’s annoying
to hear “I really think you make a difference” from someone contemplating
suicide 2 days later. I don’t want to be texted “Why the fuck did I leave the
house just to not get help” from someone 2 hours ago saying “I’m glad it’s you
who called me.” I’m over the, “You seem like you actually care!” sentiments from
people who don’t seem to care about themselves. That is, they don’t practice
the things I tell them I do to care about myself and that we’ve learned
scientifically can foster care and investment in yourself where you previously
couldn’t. Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar screaming in my head, “Save yourselves!”
No comments:
Post a Comment