[1202] Ring My Bell

I’m dancing around writing because I’ve gotten home particularly late and wish to be done with the day. No less, my brain is buzzing, and pretending I’m focusing on TV and my delicious New Belgium Trippel isn’t going to serve me as well as just getting in the weeds.

I’ve gone full steam ahead with my new job after functionally begging The Y to fire me. I’m now back to my regular casework and IOP counseling space. There’s approximately 70 people living in 8 or 9 houses owned by the company I work for. I do 4 groups a week, and have made it my mission to assess the needs of all 70 over the last few weeks in an effort to standardize how we carry out casework or “life skills.”

This program is only 4 months. What I noticed immediately is how many people were discharging without any idea where they were going next. This is IOP. Some have transferred from other similar programs, some straight out of prison, some from homelessness, or inpatient detox. All very early recovery circumstances. It appeared like the owners had a blind spot in the expectations they had of the people in their care, and it was leading to this being a messy pass-through spot more than a place to really practice the necessary skills.

As I’m inclined to do, I started asking about what the whole picture/process was, and started brainstorming how to do it better. People don’t know where they’re going? Do we have any information we provide them to get a place lined up? No? Okay, let me do that. I spent 10 hours building a resource packet so, day 1, if you’re so inclined, you can call about what the availability might be at 6 different locations. I’m going to presume innocent enough oversight as to why this wasn’t standard issue already, but in modeling what I’m counseling, I asked what I could contribute more than bitch about, and then did the thing.

This gets into what get so exhausting about these environments. You can be the living active embodiment of the values you’re talking about, how you arrived at those values, and have a direct causal impact on the people you need to affect, and the overwhelming majority will still look at you like you’re high and full of shit. They’ll cling that much harder to what they know and if you don’t relay “your” message in a way they care to hear it, be prepared for their emotional fallout.

I’m experienced and distanced enough to not take things personally. I don’t let verbal disagreements or awkward moments linger for some prolonged period of time. But when they happen, like they did today, it highlights the frustrating parts of work like this. I need to meet with 70 people a week, at least once, so I can get us all on the same page and hopefully empower some practical direct next steps. You’d think the relatively captive audience who are lucky enough to be in this program would be mostly receptive to what I have to give. Or, you’d be wiser to what it means to be an animal who is exhausted and learned to cope with addictive substances.

At least half of any house I visited is often asleep. Doesn’t matter if I’m there at 1, 3, or 6, or if I saw them awake earlier in the day for IOP. Almost none have a job, but say they want/need one. Almost none have resumes, but claim they can create one. Almost none know where they’re going to go, how to get their personal documentation, or find the nearest open food pantry. But, they’re asleep! Like there’s nothing to do, learn, or figure out. And to be sure, I’m not begrudging anyone their developmental capacity or if they struggle to read or write. I’m talking people who are perfectly capable who, somehow, find so much time to sleep, and fill their waking hours with criticisms about how the program isn’t working for them.

When I show up with a resource packet, I have people waking up just long enough to say “Okay, I’ll come in the kitchen” and go back to sleep. I have people taking “important phone calls” and “gonna smoke real quick” ducking sitting down for even 10 minutes. I have people who manifest migraines so they don’t have to leave their room, but they were healthy enough to engage in trafficking teenagers the night before. Or, you get people who, it’s as if they can’t really listen, so if you deliberately and explicitly say you’re in a rush, they’ll turn yes or no questions into 5-minute meanders. And, dare you choose to assert your boundary and respect for time and blow up your rapport, you can redirect them back to the task with a now checked-out child whose feelings you hurt.

In an environment where you’d think you’d want every possible means of not staying stuck in self-destructive cycles, you will get the most unironically judgmental attitudes you have to dodge instinctively or they’ll wear you down. In a place where people will loudly proclaim their goals and values and you’ll spend hours breaking down how to demonstrate and celebrate them step by step, literally in the next breath you’ll think you’ve entered a parallel universe because the automatic and familiar reaction dictates the scene. You don’t talk yourself into new behaviors. You literally have to practice the new thing you want, or you’ll only get what you’ve always done. This is one more time that I practiced patience, self-forgiveness (for hurting that client’s feelings), redirecting the anger/exhaustion of my perception of the entitlement and laziness.

I don’t judge people as some kind of specific good or bad thing. I’m not even feeling anything in particular about “them” as “individuals.” I’m exhausted by the human animal and it’s typical, predictable, boring as fuck cliche nature. I first reached that place with regard to myself and my own behavior, and now it allows me the distance and license to recognize and diagnose yours. It’s taken my 21 years and 1,201 blogs and counting to just barely pull my own head out of my ass. I don’t take you seriously when you defy the idea that you should fill out a worksheet or make a phone call. I don’t respect you as a serious and moral thinker when you tell me “I’m good at pretty much everything I do” and “I don’t have triggers” when we’re having this conversation in your structured rule-bound grant-funded sober-living environment.

You’re lying. I know it’s coming from feeling vulnerable. But what makes it worse is where I locate the truest and deepest lie. You think you’re more vulnerable than anyone else. You think your pain is unique. You think your anger, dread, fear, and sense of hopelessness is special. That feels downright insulting. That feels like a dare. This, of course, my personal silliness that needs to be accounted for and dealt with directly. Eventually, though, when you’re just lied to so profoundly and with such conviction thousands and thousands of times, it changes you. And it’s not always clear if that change is a certain kind of wisdom, or deadening.

Some people do get it. They contribute, and work, and write a ton down, and ask questions, and share what they’ve been reading about or watching. They help each other. They thank you for investing in them and taking the time and creating things like a resource packet that anticipated some of their worst fears. Each person is a universe unto themselves, and with that in mind, the adage I used to ridicule about “If I can only help one person, then it’ll be worth it!” rings differently. Those handful can often account for the worst behaving actors that day. They help me bother to keep playing this kind of game and maintain my perspective about the nature of “help.” I show up for singular people in my life all the time.

I do genuinely believe that the more of us who find the same kind of exhaustion and perspective about tired and cliche human shit, “things” get “better.” I don’t think it’s a “belief” that we’re all connected, and the less poisonous any given node is in that network, the better. I will almost certainly never know the extent to which it’s better, but it certainly isn’t worse, which is the second best way to confirm why you should bother with a course of action. (If I’m barely understanding a Mindscape podcast episode that was way over my head.)

Tomorrow I need to input some 40 notes and chase down 10-15 people. Over the weekend I need to create several weeks worth of curriculum packets. I’m still trying to nail down how my effort will land me somewhere close to the 100K/year mark. In context, I can deal with as many sleepy, defiant, and defensive clients as I must if the money’s right.