As someone who has worked for the past decade in front line social work, I have seen a lot of crazy stuff. I have witnessed boat-loads of grief. I have heard tales of trauma and deep sadness and absolute terror that would make your skin crawl. I’m sure many of you can relate. Working in direct practice with clients can be really hard. Yet the thing that nags at me the most is this:
I hate watching social workers turn themselves into emotional pretzels because they can’t see where they end and the client begins.
Does that sound harsh? Please let me explain myself.
A few weeks ago I promised to lay out a few practices that, if taken, would ensure a reduction in your subjective sense of overwhelm and an increase in workplace serenity. My motivation is that I want you to feel better and I want you to stay in the game. One of the most significant stressors I have witnessed is a tendency by dedicated, good-hearted helping pros to become emotionally over-involved with the people they serve. Now, we can expect that when you get to know a family you will become attached. That’s a pretty human process and I don’t want you to feel bad about that.
Trouble comes when we subtly cross an emotional line of responsibility. Here’s what I mean: if you are a child protection worker and a child on your caseload experiences harm in some way, whose fault is it? Assuming you did what you could based on what you knew in line with the mandate of your position, it is categorically NOT YOUR FAULT. If you’re a crisis line counselor and you get a call from a depressed person, perhaps you try your absolute hardest to respond to that caller compassionately and with deep empathy. The call ends when they tell you that you just don’t understand them (or something meaner) and they hang up on you. Is that your fault? IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT.
And yet we can feel the pressing guilt of failure, as though we caused their abuse or we caused their depression.
I frequently have workers confide in me that when things go wrong on their caseload they feel personally responsible. I have watched countless social workers burn out, quit, or simply endure significant suffering because they truly believe that on some level they were responsible for their client’s grief or they could have done more.
If you can relate to this, please be gentle with yourself. You probably come by it honestly. What I mean is that as a helping professional I am willing to bet that you were called to this career because of vivid formative experiences. Perhaps you “became the emotional parent” for your younger siblings or even for your mom when you were a kid. Maybe you simply found that your classmates in high school regularly confided in you and it felt really good. There is no shame in any of this. What we need to keep in mind, however, is that we may also carry longstanding misbeliefs into our professions that can reek emotional havoc on our hearts in the here-and-now.
Boundaries 101
What is a boundary? It is where you end and another person begins. Let’s look at some more obvious ones. I can’t take off my coworker’s shoe. Why? It’s her shoe and her foot, not mine. I have my own shoe. I can’t expect my friend to pay my cell phone bill. That’s my bill, not his. It is my responsibility.
Boundaries become a little trickier when children are involved. For instance, if your two year old runs across the street and gets hurt, who’s responsible? I’m afraid it’s you. Entirely you. The reason is that the little guy is only two and you are fully responsible for his safety. Now fast-forward 20 years. If your 22 year old runs across the street and gets hurt, who’s responsible? Is it you? In NO WAY is it you. Why? Because now your little guy is a grownup and is completely responsible for himself.
Our boundary relationships develop more or less instinctively. For example, if you saw someone else’s two year old bolt out onto the street, you may jump in AS THOUGH you were their parent. You’re not actually responsible, but it just feels like you should be. The same happens with our clients. We watch them live their lives at a range of capacities. Sometimes, those capacities are marginal at best.
The result is that we may unconsciously become the “parent” in a parent-child type relationship.
And if you are the parent in a parent-child relationship, guess what- in your head and heart you’re responsible! Let’s take this a little further. If you are responsible as an actual parent to your clients then what of your lunch break? No, parents don’t get lunch breaks. What about leaving at 5pm? No, parents don’t get to leave their job at 5pm. What about suffering verbal abuse from your client? No, parents have to just take it (actually, if your client was really your young child, you would be granted the power to step in and train that child so that they stop verbally abusing you. But they are only your client, remember?).
What I am saying is that it is so easy to find ourselves in an emotional quagmire of messed up roles and boundaries. This, in turn, is a recipe for compulsive work behaviours, feelings of overwhelm, and eventually emotional burnout. The hard fact is that if you think that this applies to you, it’s actually your job to correct it. You need to sort yourself out and perhaps re-establish healthy boundary lines.
If you are feeling overwhelmed about where to begin with repairing your boundaries, here is a simple plan of action that I have plucked from my Recover Your Resilience course that I think could be a good start in terms of rethinking your practice:
Discerning process from outcome.
As a helping professional, you get paid for process, or what I call “process commitments”. You are paid to show up, to work with your client population, to think about them, to strategize with them, to partner with them to achieve goals, and to hopefully be an agent of change in their lives. Of course you are invested. You desire great outcomes. This is why you got into your field- you want to help people to recover/heal/grow/get better. However, you are not ultimately responsible for the decisions of your clients. You owe a duty of care to them and you may even hold a statutory office, such as a legal mandate to protect children on your caseload. Those are significant responsibilities, to be sure. Yet at the end of the day, 99% of the time you are really not responsible for your clients’ ultimate outcomes (There are a few exceptions, such as if you are directly caring for a child or someone with an intellectual disability and hold direct responsibility. Even then, we may take on extra guilt that is not ours to endure).
When meeting with your supervisor or with clients it is important to get straight what your goals are. I never begin working with a client until I am clear with myself, my client, my supervisor, the referring social worker, or the agency, in writing, what the goals are. Having the goals put in writing and signed by all parties allows you to defend yourself later if needed (The good news is that many agencies already have these goal-based systems in place). Remember that if an item or goal in the contract is listed as an outcome, it should only have the client’s name attached to it. If it is a matter of process it can also have your name attached (if you have truly agreed to it).
Here are some examples of desired Outcomes:
- Client will maintain sobriety
- Client family lowers risk factor X
- Client’s global assessment of functioning goes from 17 to above 40.
- Client will return to work by the end of March
Here are some examples of process commitments:
- Client will attend all scheduled appointments
- Therapist will liaise with school to discuss support options
- Client will enroll and attend Positive Parenting Program
- Social Worker will schedule one hour per week with client
Notice that only the client is responsible for outcomes but either client or worker can be responsible for process commitments. So then, you can be held responsible for, say, not calling the Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre as agreed upon to see about enrollment for your client. That does not make you responsible for your client’s commitment to sobriety, however.
When clients feel the negative effects of their choices, it makes sense that they will sometimes look for other places to place blame. Actually most of us do this- it is a way to preserve our sense of self or dignity in the face of failure. It can therefore be a frequent occurrence when a child is apprehended from a home for a parent to say “This is your fault! You didn’t meet with me enough!” or “I didn’t know that X was your bottom line- you didn’t tell me!”
I know that this section may come across as somewhat adversarial or “lawyer-ish”. In other words, it sounds as though it assumes the worst about people- that our clients will be manipulative, that our bosses will blame us, that we will have to fight for our vocational lives in an unsafe system. The sad fact is that to some degree this is true. Hurt people hurt people. Dysfunction and its consequences are central to our profession. However, the primary reason for having goals and expectations set out in writing, every time, is to actually facilitate functional, trusting relationships. Fences exist between neighbors to keep pets and shrubs on the right side and mark out everyone’s territory. That does not assume animosity between those neighbors, but instead it lays a groundwork for a fair and mutually beneficial relationship.
How are your boundaries? What lines have been crossed in your life by your family members, clients, or friends? Let us know in the comments section below.