Self-Care

HUMN 8110 Advance d Social Work Theory and Practice Week 12 – Self -Care for the Social Worker (SC) AJIA MEUX: I had a professor, when I was in graduate school, who told us that social work is the only profession that really is about you. And so when we talk about social work, and we talk about the work, we always say, "This isn't about you, this is about the client." But because we use ourselves as tools -- we are really our own tools. We don't have a camera. We don't have a calculator. We don't have a computer. All we have is ourselves. So we have to fine -tune ourselves in or der to make sure that the work that we're doing is right. TWILAH ANTHONY: My role, and how it impacts my social worker, has to be very hands - on, and I have to lead by example. And what I mean by that is, my social workers see how I deal with the kids. And my social workers know that although my degree i s in education, I utilize my minor, which was psychology, to foster the relationships here, and my relationships not only with the students but my relationship with the social worker and staff as a whole. If I lead by example, and my staff are happy and my staff know that they are supported, regardless of what the support is, then they can do a better job in supporting the students. So it's like a domino effect. It's like; I'm always making sure that I am providing them with enough training. We are a very s mall school, so we don't have a social work network. I only can afford one social worker, so I need to make sure that I keep her motivated and I keep her in the know. And in the know means making sure that she has the right training, that if there are conf erences that she feels are beneficial for her, that I get her to that conference for her to continue to be in the know. She goes to a bi -weekly group session with mentors of social workers, and that camaraderie keeps the juices flowing with her, and then s he comes back and she'll share the information with me and say, "Ms. Anthony, the social work part of me wants to do this, but I need to take the educational part from you and we need to marry them together so we can figure out how that's going to work in the class." So that camaraderie, that constant communication, that knowing that whatever your struggles are with a student that you just had therapy with, that you can come and talk to me. Not telling me what the therapy session was about, but just needing to vent, because knowing that you have somebody there to support you is very encouraging, definitely, with that field of work. AJIA MEUX: --together, tastes like chocolate. It is a good alternative. One of the things that I do to avoid burnout is participate in my social work group. So they sort of give me renewed spirit and confidence and vigor in this work. So it's about five or six of us who a re social workers in the District. We are able to process our profession and how our profession impacts us. I find a lot of people don't want to hear about the work that you do. And maybe it's because we are social workers that we talk about being social w orkers all the time. I start sentences off with, I'm a social worker, dot, dot, dot, and a lot of folk don't want to hear that. I've been told I'm being elitist when I say it, and so now I'm kind of self -conscious about saying it. But in a group of six or seven other social workers who get that from everybody else, it's comfortable. And I can take my shoes off and we eat and we laugh and we have social work humor that nobody else gets, and it's inappropriate to other people, but it works for us. And that's how I get it out. Strawberries and the yogurt, wasn't it delicious? MALE SPEAKER: That was delicious. I liked that. AIJA MEUX: OK. You have to trust me. You have got to trust me with the apples and the peanut butter. You know I've never steered you wrong w ith -- I've never steered you wrong before. MALE SPEAKER: Make sure -- if you've got the apples, I'll take it. AIJA MEUX: It's just easy to get burned out. It's really, really easy. I work out, I eat, and I travel. Those are my two pastimes. I have colleague s that deal with their burnout in less healthy ways. They eat a lot, because they're at work for long periods of time. We relate that back to romantic lives. I know a lot of women social workers who are single. And to feed that comfort, they use food. Soci al work is a largely dominated female profession, so there's not a lot of male contact at trainings, at conferences, at work. I worked at a domestic violence shelter and the only men that came in were men who delivered water or oil and heating and gas and electric. It's hard to date and work at the same time. The challenges to living where you work is that you could run into a client at any time.

You can run into a client when you're having a drink. You can run into a client at a church, when you are being you. And my code of ethics says that I can't have a dual relationship with clients, which means that if I'm in a bar having a drink and a client walks in, I have to walk out. If I am at a church and this has been my church for however many years, and a cli ent joins my church, I have to process through that, and I have to put safeguards in place where I don't create a dual relationship with a client. It just makes it difficult. I've run into clients at the grocery store. I ha d a client who was the receptionist at the place that I got my hair done. This was when I was new in my practice, and I would never do it again, but though I referred her for the job, I didn't realize all the things that come into play when you are a recep tionist at a hair salon. Like, you have to give that person your credit card, and that person is running your credit card information, or when the owner of the salon is angry with the person that you referred, and then how you can get caught in the middle of that. So it makes it really, really challenging. And the only way to fine -tune yourself is to take care of yourself. Every morning, when I wake up, I have to check myself before I walk in here, because I could have a screwed - up morning and walk in here and screw up five people's lives for the day. And I tell students this. I say, what if you walked in and you said, "Hi, Ms. Aija, and I said, ugh," and went in my office and closed the door? And then I tried to pull you at 2 o'clock?

"Would you remember me making that face?" "Yeah, I would. OK." That's why I smile. And if I'm not in a good mood, I stay in my office and close my door until I can force myself to be in a mood that is conducive to talking to people. But we are our only tools. We have to make su re that we check ourselves constantly. We have to make sure we take care of ourselves. I have colleagues that are so burned out, that are just screwing up paperwork, screwing up people's lives. Literally screwing up people's lives. That's what it translate s to at the end of the day, because we're working with people. We're not working with numbers, we're not building houses, we're not cleaning the Anacostia River. We are helping to change people's lives. © Laureate Education, Inc.