[1070] Bad Boy

I'm doing nothing if not trying. I try so hard to do things the "right" way. I work against what I know and deliberately exercise good faith and good will where an infinite well of hatred and criticism otherwise exists. Why I bother to try to behave this way got tested and challenged today.

I think I need to just get the argument portion out of the way.

As I was explaining to one of my groups, who had yet to be informed that I was leaving, I talked about having my out-patient clinic. 99 times out of 100, if you find a therapist or counselor you actually trust and are willing to talk to, if they leave wherever you found them, that's it. It becomes a best of luck wish to find someone you might have invested years of your life with. I occupy a unique space where, if you were actually getting utility and feeling growth in talking with me, you just have to click a different link or call a different number.

I had 11 different counselors coming in to cover the 12 groups I was leaving. For the past 2 weeks I've made approximately the same statements regarding how to find me, how my company seeks to work, and how I hope to have structured it in a way that people can maintain their attendance and adherence to Groups' rules, and still afford me. I don't even trust Groups and have watched them do demonstrable harm in an ongoing way, but in that spirit of deliberately trying not to be hateful and spite-ridden literally structured my "competition" to accommodate the clients' needs first.

I've made those statements in front of providers, 7 other counselors, office managers from different regions, discussed it with my supervisor, and no one until this cunt, Richard Lembke, batted an eye. He calls it "wholly unethical" to be pitching my company to people who have expressly asked me how they can keep in contact. He reports me, takes control of the group, and kicks me out.

There's so much to account for, yet it's all very simple and can be done quickly. First, we regularly coordinate care or attempt to find other providers if Groups doesn't seem to be the best fit. We have an entire department dedicated to giving our people numbers to call and options to explore so they can keep a regular prescription or get resources Groups doesn't offer. If you're putting people first, and they've built a trusting therapeutic relationship with someone for as many as 15 months, where does the confidence come from to assert the "wholly unethical" charge? What does it say about every single other person who listened and didn't feel entitled and moved to hijack my group? What do you make of the 2 people who immediately reached out to me after that Group to either tell me they, and the rest of the group, defended me or wish to proceed individually?

Between the 4 people loosely associated with my company, that isn't offering medication assisted treatment, there's 1 person on the calendar bi-weekly. I'll maybe have 2 in a couple days. Groups can't handle that? I'm cutting into their profits too much? The subsidized multi-million dollar operation with 350 people in our office alone? K. The company that regularly admits people who are exceptionally mentally or physically unwell that we watch deteriorate or destroy groups each week? That's not "wholly unethical" when I have every supervisor and the regional medical director agreeing with me when I call it out in the meetings?

It is one of the hardest things to do to find someone you can actually trust to talk to. To get reasonable, thoughtful, critical feedback that let's you then put it to work is an exceptionally rare find. That is to say, what I do has taken a lot of practice, life experience, and adherence to being incredibly fucking ethical given how I know I could act in working for places that aren't ethical.

If I get to some level of "wild" success, I don't want it to be because I created a cult, dependents, or through intimidation. I don't want the people who work with me to feel like they are under constant threat to say the "right" things to sweep bad shit under the rug. I don't want people who, even jokingly, start to worship or glom onto me because I'm yada yada, "The only one who's ever cared…" And I don't want to be so self-assured and delusional that I'm willing to Elon Musk my way past any critical feedback or proper restraint.

Parts of the world are at war. The "in group out group" and unearned confident narratives are running amok. I initially thought about titling this "Religious Zeal" because that's what Richard made me think of in how confidently he asserted my lack of ethics. He is convinced of himself, and thus in my estimation, a dumb and dangerous cunt. His small, but righteous and mighty, perspective will speak with all the conviction of a terrorist or zealot, and smugly denote the hyperbole in the analogy. After all, he's never killed anyone, and it's right there in the rule book how we're all supposed to be.

He's the norm. Ignorant conviction following the strictest interpretation of some uncriticized norm or rule. Who wrote it down? Why? Does it make sense? Who benefits from it? Doesn't matter, daddy said so, so begone unethical beast. I didn't get the job for two days as a spy from another giant Suboxone provider intent on snatching people. I was trying to respect and protect relationships I've been cultivating for 15 months. Neither he, nor Groups, gives a fuck though. They've never given a fuck about me, they don't care if you're mentally unwell or appropriate. They care about getting thousands of submissions sent to insurance every week.

It's hard not to regress into sociopathic and "pragmatic" thinking about that. There's a dozen shady things I could do to make money, seize power, and functionally arrest people under some horrifying notion of "care" or "help" or "harm reduction." I don't. I don't not just because it's wrong. I don't because I need to believe there's actually a right and just way to succeed. Every other fucking aspect of my life is the exact opposite lesson. The companies I work for exploit. The indifferent capitalist machine churns through all of our lives. Desperate and privileged elites demand exorbitant amounts for an hour of their time. It's bad. It's bad practice. It's being a bad human. It's bad for your soul. It's opportunistic and fatalistic and empty and filled with so much screaming denial I can't stomach it.

When I encounter the Richard's of the world, a switch flips in me. I get an adrenalin rush. I get scared. I like to cause pain, to fight, and create a scene. I like to show you, immediately, what's underneath all of the practiced professional posture. I like feeling ruthless and explicit about how I might choose to begin achieving my ends. It's as dark and scary as I ever feel, because it's compelling and feels incredibly reasonable, even after I come down.

Why not? That's what I have to keep asking myself. Why not "not kill" in the same way the zealots and dumb fucks hold themselves harmless in the suicidal environments they cultivate? I can construct a world in which you're feeding from what I serve you, especially if I entertain the all-consuming addictive part of me that would like to make an example of you. It takes a lot of energy, but perhaps it's energy well spent. I'm certain no one's going to speak up to tell me any differently.

You'd get off on watching too. People want the shit show. People are eating up the war videos and rolling baby heads. We kill ourselves in dozens of ways each day, knowing we don't deserve what we have and don't protect and create what we need. So when someone else is manifesting that impulse, slide over the popcorn. I know what you watchers want as much as I know what the worst parts of me wants. You want to be right about me. I want to believe I can be right about anything. We want the orgiastic jubilation of confirmation and conviction.

I never want to be a genuine Dick. I never want to be so convinced and pathetically clutching my pearls as something to bargain with in the next life. It might take me 4 hours to properly come down from an adrenalin rush, but that 4 hours is down from a veritable lifetime of feeling like I need to react disproportionately and "now" to the infinite sea of small petty people and their indignities fired like birdshot.

The world is truly a miserable place and I absolutely hate more of it than I like. What I like happens to mean more to me in terms of what I need to see and try to create than the forgone conclusions of exercising my hated. How long do you think it took me to figure that out? Can you say the same thing?