If you’ve been following, I wrote a post a few months ago detailing five things that secretly take social workers out at the knees. Now it’s kind of a jerky move to write about all the ways your job might be lame without providing decent solutions. So last week I started in on the project of addressing each one. Find the first one here.
So…why do you say that I “hate” my clients again?! That’s strong language. Well, it has to do with walking on one of two life-paths.
Let’s consider who is on those dual paths leading into child protection social work. You see, the road of child protection is fed by two converging streams. I call these feeder routes “The Road of Hard Knocks” and “Ivory Tower Way” (Please pardon the over-generalization. This is a simple argument that helps to make a point. Your mileage may vary. And in case you’re wondering, I consider myself a hybrid of the two).
I’ve witnessed two groups of sufferers within social work: those who grew up with a good deal of their own trauma, and those who by contrast lived a relatively charmed existence. For some, close and trusting familial relationships free of abuse or neglect were a rare or nonexistent thing growing up. In fact, some of those on The Road of Hard Knocks went into social work precisely because it was a continuation of their childhood world- it was the natural evolution of their existence. For others, the chance of becoming a professional helper takes all that childhood pain and gambles it on a chance at healing, redemption, or a sense of meaning. I admire the Knocks Team’s fighting spirit. They are scrappy, but they have their eyes on the prize.
Conversely, there are those on the Ivory Tower Way. They are generally upper-middle class. They often belong to the dominant culture and faith of their region. They have largely been spared from witnessing the ugliest parts of humanity as insiders. Some will mock this group as over-privileged and entitled. However, their comparative historical freedom from abuse and pain is actually a great strength in them. Their idealism is still intact, and it is beautiful. They come into social work to make a difference. The suffering they have witnessed (usually as an outsider) is unacceptable to them and they desire to make a difference, just as they are accustomed to doing in many other areas of their lives.
Enter social work practice. Two roads converge in a wood.
I propose that hatred for one’s clients is not actually hatred for them- it’s often something else. When we look at those two roads, The Road of Hard Knocks and Ivory Tower Way, we see a signature of disdain in the social workers on each. Let’s start with the Ivory Team. They are thrown in. Words cannot express what this looks like. I have had many lovely conversations with these workers in their first week on the job, so full of energy and conviction. It’s like seeing a pair of brand new gleaming shoes on the shelf, unspoiled. It has caused me great pain to watch the first scuffs and scrapes appear. Inevitably a sternness develops as those new Ivory shoes start their uphill jog. Eventually the new social worker’s stern countenance gives way to expressions of exhaustion and perplexity as they realize that although they are running with everything they have, those promised changes are largely illusory.
The other thing the Ivory Team faces is exposure to true misery and dysfunction, often for the first time. Not on TV. Not theoretically. Real life poverty in real time. Hoarder homes with dirty diapers and needles laying around. Oppressive boyfriends who have had their way with children sexually. Hopelessness becomes tangible to every bodily sense. Wretchedness has a smell to it that isn’t masked easily. Disenfranchisement causes a glaring stain that won’t come out. This is where hatred seeps into the Ivory heart. No, the hatred is not for the client. The hatred is for the dire, dirty world that the client is entrenched in, like a soldier doomed to die on the battlefront. This is a hatred for the loss of sweet illusion; the beautiful childhood daydream of a pristine world, or at least a world that can be redeemed and made whole again.
Hang on; there’s more.
Let’s consider the Hard Knocks Team. They grew up in that muddy battleground, so they are rarely shocked when they start in child protection. However, they experience something unique as they dance with their clients. Where the Ivory Team is meeting a new cast of characters for the first time and reacting to it, the Knocks Team already knows those characters very well because those are their fathers, their mothers, their siblings, and themselves. Am I making this up? Am I being overly dramatic? My doctoral research says that this is exactly what happens. “I looked at that little girl and that was me,” said one participant. “I hated that mother and then I realized that I really hated her narcissism. My mother was a narcissist,” said another. “That guy…he was a bully. I couldn’t even talk to him I was so angry with him….I grew up with nothing. We had nothing. He was like a dude who used to kick the s___ out of my best friend.” Every single one of my research participants who had suffered abuse or neglect was powerfully triggered by clients who either looked like their abuser or who looked like them.
When social workers on the Knocks Team interact with “familiar” protection clients, they are brought right back to their own adverse experiences. So in a sense, they don’t hate their clients either. They hate who their clients remind them of and how that makes them feel. They hate remembering their own harm and pain and fear that emerges as these similar scenarios strip away years of hard-fought psychological defenses.
Okay, exhale.
Both of these roads travel in parallel and are painful. But the good news is that those road keeps going if you’re willing to keep walking. There is hope. And the Knocks Team is right: this can be a path toward healing. This doesn’t have to be the end of the story, but only a snapshot in time if you keep putting one grubby shoe in front of the other.
I promise to write more on this, but here is some quick advice for those walking on each path:
To the Hard Knocks Team
Awareness is everything for you. Knowing your personal emotional minefield is crucial. You know your job- you do risk assessment and protect children. But every so often you will see yourself in a child or see your selfish mom in a client mom, and you will freak out. Maybe you will be able to immediately identify that you are having some kind of countertransference reaction or projecting your stuff onto the family. Chances are, however, that you will only feel a vague but powerful emotion. Triggers fit hand-in-glove with like experiences. My research participants who had been abandoned as children (suprise!) get triggered when they work with children who have been abandoned. Those who had “selfish” mothers get their ire up when interviewing client mothers who don’t seem to give a crap about their kids.
Expect a fleeting thought like “I need to get these kids out of this home” to race through your head during those times. That’s understandable. Here’s the problem. When making complex risk decisions with many variables, no crystal ball, and a paucity of facts, your brain will try to fill in whatever blanks it can. Guess where it will get its material from! That’s right- when your mom did that horrific thing to you, you may unconsciously add that to the “fact base” of your client mom. In other words, this false fact will inadvertantly be included in the mix as you make your risk decisions with that family. You and I both know that some protection decisions sit on a knife’s edge- they can truly go either way. We do not want your projections influencing client outcomes.
More importantly for you, I strongly recommend getting training in a heavy-duty therapy, like Dialectical Behavioural Therapy or some other kind of personal trauma work. Chances are you need to work on these triggers. You need distance and perspective. The amazing strength you have; that you are a true insider who “gets it” is also your weakness. Because of your insider status you may also be very biased. It’s a double-edged sword.
To the Ivory Tower Team
The mandate of social work- your mission as you enter this noble field- is change. You are determined to effect change and that is awesome. The trouble is that the desire for change is actually a form of suffering. Unquenched desires are suffering. What makes this a problem for you is that clients rarely change (Sorry, they don’t. Sometimes they do and that’s awesome, but the one’s that don’t are in the majority). As such, you are entering the social work profession primed for suffering.
The trick, then, to reduce or eradicate this suffering in you (remember all the pain and dysfunction described above?) is to fiercely refuse to take responsibility for your clients’ change or progress. If they do change, that’s a bonus. No, you must deeply accept that nothing may change in them despite your best efforts. They are them and you are you.
Instead, shift your focus toward service. Your role is serving your client. How you serve the families on your caseload is generally within your control, in contrast to the outcomes, which lie in your client’s wheelhouse. When your focus is on serving people excellently, then you can be proud of that. You can find satisfaction in the knowledge that you skillfully acted in love.
Regardless of what path you hail from, know that I am proud of you because you are on a narrow road that is walked by few. And that makes all the difference.