Welcome to part 3 of this series. After part 2 suffered some pointed criticism for being a tad negative, I thought I would lighten today’s post. If you recall, a few months back I predicted that we child protection workers have a painfully short life-span. The reasons for this are many, and I provided five for your consideration.
But rather than leave you hanging by your vocational fingernails, I promised to try to be helpful. Constructive. You and I both know that cynicism is a heart killer in this biz and I only care about your heart. Let me say this again: I only care about your heart. Why? Your heart- your emotional, psychological, and spiritual core- is your most valuable asset. It is like a spring that keeps feeding us and nourishing us, even when the stakes are high and the chips are down. The problem is that it is also a spring that can run dry. It can get polluted. When your heart becomes calloused or broken, your entire life is effected. When we speak of those whose world’s have grown dim or who feel disillusioned and cynical about life, we are really talking about heart damage.
Now if we want to be technical or “evidence-based”, I am really speaking about emotional trauma. However, lately I have found it more useful to speak about the heart. Maybe this is because the “heart” language-base is much richer and has stood the test of time.
So before we move toward solutions, let’s frame the problem. A primary cause of stress and anxiety is enduring a setting of high perceived demand and low perceived control. I say “perceived” because the things that make us pull our hair out are subjective. Stress is in the eye of the beholder.
High demand means that there are expectations and consequences attached to your behaviours. For child protection social workers, this is obvious: if a kid on your caseload gets hurt, it’s your fault. It doesn’t matter that mom left him with a registered sex-offender. We all get that it “should” be mom’s fault, but if they are your clients, then guess what- you know that’s on you. In fact in most jurisdictions, a kind of systemic anxiety pervades our offices. We are always assessing risk. We are professional worriers. Too many things have gone down for us to be naive about our jobs or let our guards down. We also understand liability. We know we need to cover our butts.
What about “low control”? I am amazed when media criticizes child protection workers for “not caring” or “not intervening” with children and families. When a teenager gets into trouble and gets hurt, we tend to take the most criticism by newscasters. First of all, shut up. Sorry…that’s my whole argument to the media. But second, have you ever tried to tell a 15 year old street-entrenched girl what to do? Good luck. Should she be getting addictions counselling? Yes! Should she stay with her very expensive foster family paid for by the state rather than going AWOL? Yes! So when she makes “other” choices, or gives her foster parents the finger, what shall we do? Lock her up? The laws don’t exist. Reason with her? Nope. She is beyond reasoning with the system. There are few good options available to us. This is what low control looks like.
So when we combine 1 part high-demand with 1 part low-control, the product is what I call “Clientziety”. I know, clever, right? We have the unenviable job of being responsible for something we don’t have the power to fix. Deep down, when we look at what underlies anxiety it is almost always a fear of destruction. Either we will be physically destroyed (which is why we get that funny tingly feeling when standing on a high ledge) or we will be socially destroyed. A thousand years ago, social destruction and physical destruction were one and the same because if you were put out of the tribe you starved or were killed by wild animals. Within the modern-day mind’s eye, being socially destroyed usually looks like condemnation for our sins and some form of social exile that shamefully reveals us to the world as worthless and unlovable. Yes, I like to keep these posts shallow.
Inspiring, I know. So for the aforementioned haters, may I introduce: the happy part of my post. I also intend to make good on my titled vow that these would be “unexpected” solutions. I promise, no healing crystals or positive thinking.
The truth is that when we are aware of these existential fears we can conquer them. That foreboding feeling on your way to the office on Monday can be mitigated. Let’s hit these three clientziety-busting techniques.
1. Be collectively crystal clear about everyone’s responsibilities
Collective crystal clarity (I’m sorry, I can’t help myself) means that you know where your job starts and ends with a client, and everyone else knows it too (including your clients). Sometimes in the name of wanting to have positive working relationships with our families or “wanting to have a good start” we focus on a kind of quasi-friendship with them where we avoid discussing the hard things. We don’t like speaking about boundaries right away. Yet what I have seen happen over and over again is this well-worn situation where (often new) social workers work extra hard to earn the trust of a parent, something then goes south (a protection concern) with that parent, then the parent feels betrayed when the worker is forced to act.
Instead, boundaries must be laid down early and often. “If you do X, I will do Y. Nothing personal, it’s my job” It sounds icy, but truly you are caring for your family with those words. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be strengths-based or should pathologize our clients. Rather, I am suggesting that by making your boundaries clear and direct, your clients will learn to trust your words and will be less tempted to shift blame on you when things go south.
Your boss and other stakeholders also need to be part of the collective crystal clarity matrix. The more you communicate in writing with others and work collaboratively, the less direct responsibility you hold for the case. What I mean is that if you share power with your coworkers and supervisor, you will also benefit from shared responsibility for decisions, even the bad ones. The last thing you want is to be separated from the herd.
The result of everyone being on the same page is that it allows you to emotionally release some of the weight of concern you have for your clients. This point may not sound “unexpected”, but messy, mucky boundaries are the number one cause of headaches and anxiety for social workers in my experience.
2. Action conquers anxiety, avoidance feeds it
This has been a hard-fought lesson for me. My tendency when feeling stressed is to turn toward distraction in an attempt to self-regulate my anxiety. The trouble is that while dissociation is a great short-term strategy, it is a very poor long term one. Putting off returning a client’s call to deliver bad news will only cause your internal state to unravel in the long run. If unchecked, this habit may culminate in deriliction of duty- of truly dropping the vocational ball and being in hot water with the suits upstairs (actually, they don’t wear suits. I checked). I have watched many of us tireless social workers fall into this pattern. Most end up quitting. I have inherited some of their caseloads over the years and their cases are a mess. They are like students who let their assignments pile up and then in late November they snap and drop out of school in an act of desperation.
The best course of action is to sit with the anxiety and ponder it (see point 3). Follow the fear and you will discover the hard thing that needs to be done. Then go do that thing. That might seem obvious, but it falls squarely into the category of “simple but not easy”. One way to nudge yourself in that direction is to find a trusted coworker and tell her about why that choice is eating you up. She may provide additional insight.
In the end you will be best served by formulating a plan and then executing on the plan. Practically speaking, if you have a todo list of 10 items, rank them from “most difficult” (read: most anxiety producing) to “least difficult” and do the absolute hardest one first. It’s all downhill from there. Most of us like to cross off the easy ones for a “quick win” but that is just a covert form of procrastination.
Keep in mind too that there may be other emotions swirling around that lead to avoidance- disgust, sadness, anger, etc. Yet, responding is always the right choice. We will soften the severity of our feelings by recognizing that when we respond, that is the definintion of “responsible”. Remember, taking action is hard short-term, but makes you feel better long-term. Avoidance has the reverse effect.
3. Give up trying to control the emotion of anxiety
Now I am shifting squarely into our inner game. This third point is about losing in order to win, and that makes this technique “unexpected”. I am talking about a philosophical stance that I hope you will consider. From a young age we are taught to be self controlled. We are taught not to hit. We clean up our mess before lunch. We do our chores. These are all well and good. Yet many of us received other similar-sounding messaging that is NOT good: “You’re okay,” “You’re fine,” “Don’t be a baby,” “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” etc. We were taught that in addition to controlling our behaviours we must also control the feeling of our emotions.
I would argue that somewhere in there we have gotten our wires crossed. We’ve been trained to think that we can exert control over basic emotions in the same manner that we learned to be disciplined with our behaviours. So acquiring the discipline to not scream at your sister/teacher/boss when angry is good and helpful. However, the crossed wire was being disciplined not to feel the anger itself. Can you hear the difference? Do not feel the grief. Control your emotions. This is the mistake. We have mixed up the feeling of an emotion with the appropriate expression of that emotion.
Here’s the problem: when we attempt to exert control over the feeling of an emotion like anxiety, we short-circuit a healthy process that is literally baked into us as humans. This stiffling or stuffing or pushing down of feelings might work in the short term, but it activates a number of secondary systems in the process that we simply cannot control in the long run. We were not designed to forcefully prevent the feeling of feelings, at least not for very long.
It’s like stopping a sneeze or holding your breath. Try running upstairs with your breath held. At some point your autonomic nervous system takes over and says, “You are being stupid, I am overriding your foolish choice not to breathe!” The same holds true with emotions. Think about all of the things people do so that they don’t have to feel their emotions: they avoid, distract, self-medicate with substances, withdraw, over-think, and take risks. Now, think about all of the “secondary” problems that the items on that list cause for you. Are they really worth the pain of feeling a difficult emotion? I don’t say this to minimize your emotions, but rather to affirm them. To promote them. I am begging you to listen to what they have to tell you.
So what does this look like for anxiety in social workers? Every emotion serves a purpose. Anger tells us that something is wrong or unjust and that we need to take action to fix it. Sadness is the brain’s way of processing the loss of something that matters to us. Anxiety is a form of fear about the future- something dangerous is lurking down the road that we need to action to protect against.
By sitting with that anxiety and carefully considering it’s source, we can gain considerable insight about what might be down the road on our caseload. By attending to these feelings, not with the agenda of forcing them to move along but just to listen, we can let them pass in their own time. They are like clouds that come and go. We can’t keep them from coming, but they will move across the sky eventually.
So here’s your action item: grab your daytimer and set a daily “Worry Period” of 20 minutes. When you find yourself ruminating about something, write it down or tell yourself that you will address it during your next dedicated worry time. You may find that you brain will let it go so that you can get on with your day. If it doesn’t, chose to stop and simply feel what you are feeling. By the way, deferring only works if you actually attend the “Worry Period” appointment you’ve made with yourself! During those 20 minutes, write down all of the things you are feeling anxiety about and systematically meditate through your list. Work on developing action-based solutions for each of your concerns.
When we permit ourselves to experience these anxieties, we reduce the extra ways that we suffer from those secondary problems- the addictive or compulsive or avoidant things we do to mask the pain. This frees up our mind and energy to return that difficult call and cross the hardest item off the list. Most importantly it protects our heart, the wellspring of life.
Have a great day 🙂