@heartless, does being a counselor not help

I really appreciate the oppertunity to discuss all this, because I haven’t been able to since leaving the profession. To be clear and in context, I did not rise to the rank of therapist or psychologist. I once aspired to, but I stopped at undergrad. I worked as a social worker and a psych lead tech in a clinical setting, and I worked as a research assistant in an academic setting.

What that amounts to, in terms of ability or skill, has often been unclear. Most people mistake me for someone with a graduate degree, and I spent two years working as equals with people with PhDs, so it’s hard to ever be normal again after all that.

I’d say appreciating context, and how context colors things is one of the largest ways my education and experience has helped me.

I’ll take them one at a time though, education has taught me that if left to my own devises I’ll natter on about whatever and sometimes lose focus. Once or twice I’ve filled an essay requirement in that way, but outside of academics it isn’t particularly effective.

Did taking psych classes help in my own healing? Somewhat, I’d say that I went in thinking I’d be wiser and have figured more out about the human mind than I know now. But I learned so much about mechanics, neurology that I never would have sought out on my own.

I learned why some of what I know works does work, and some of that I discovered at the same time as my education. Meditation works, not for any spiritual reason at all but because the specific kind of meditation I was taught redirects blood flow to the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe makes sense of things, and facilitates a feeling of control and peace.

I think it taught me a lot about the type of people who become therapists, and I’ll come back to that.

The second one is actually the big one, the broken people I worked with changed my life. I started out working with what society sees as monsters, but by working closely with them for so long I learned they were broken people. Some were committed to being monsters, they didn’t want to grow and learn. I think that there are some people you can’t help was a really valuable lesson.

but I have a specific person I remember working with, and it was for a very short time because they didn’t need anything from me. They were under investigation, unfounded as it turned out. But this family was deeply broken, the father was going through one of the worst cases of depression I ever saw. Yet, his family was so supportive, he loved his kids and that was enough for hiim.

It was so changing for me, finding out that it was okay to try and make peace with ones own disfuction. Learning that there was safe harbor for broken people, that you could be broken but still be an active and vital person in your community….. I couldn’t have walked away from my career without that. I couldn’t be making peace with my disability without that.

I’ve met so many broken people like that, who don’t let it drag them down, or who carry on with a strength and courage that inspired me. That particular guy I was referencing, he broke both of his legs so bad he could hardly stand, after being a blue collar worker relying on his body and working legs to make a living. Often, I’ve thought that if someone with those challenges can survive and thrive, maybe I have a shot of it.

Going back to therapists, and people who work in the field. There’s a significant amount of them who are doing it to try and make peace with some part of themselves. Honestly, I was one of them. It was seeing that which pushed me, I didn’t want to have my whole life be about my brokenness.

There are also people who at least start out passionate. I got to work with a lot of people still doing their work requirement to get their licence. Those people still had much more spark and passion than I have found in professional therapists. Professional therapists on average are tired and burnt out. They are at least somewhat dissassociated from the pain around them. That’s why often “bad therapists” are trying to teach people to dissassociate, because it’s a powerful tool that they need to hold on.

but, the system relies on the passion and dedication people have. Overwork is common and expected. More and more I found apathy and complacency were not only common, they were required. Someone like me who doesn’t take “the funding isn’t there” as a valid answer for why trauma survivors are re-exposed to their abusers….

I saw so many other people ejected from the profession. What’s more, I saw how little effort went into preventing it. We were acceptable casualties. There was a sick machosism about enduring pain, and all the while rationalizing that it was for a good cause.

so, it’s a tough job, that’s the first thing, but add onto that it’s a tough job with a toxic culture.

I do wonder if it might be different somewhere else, if there are places the community is more supportive and helpful. I’ve seen how there are pockets of effective and compassionate people, and there are places where the disfunction has been going on so long and so unchecked it is preparing to destroy the organization operating it.

Which leads to the weird third category zombie services show up. I’m thinking specifically about a rehab program I worked for. It was so deeply toxic that everyone I knew who worked for them was planning their exit. Yet, we’re still in the depths of the opiod epidemic. Our state doesn’t believe in building their own programs for this sort of thing, so this organization that absolutely should have been shut down couldn’t be because even the terrible treatment they provided was better than no treatment.

The same applies to every public health agency in the state I live in. People accuse me of being very political, but when you have politicians who cry about the state of mental health but then make choices to divert resources away from getting people the help they need….. I don’t understand how to be objective reacting to that.

*sigh* I need to sit with it for a bit

so it’s a mixed bag. I wouldn’t have my current awful opinion of certain parts of the industry if I hadn’t of gone into it. At the same time, I’m proud of the work I did, and I realize that there is a great deal of variation within that industry.

I took an hour away, right there before that last paragraph, and I realized that I could have avoided discussing the internal corruption… as in I see that is possible. I’m not at a place, healing wise, where I’m ready to stop telling that story.

I actually did quite a bit of narrative psychology in the research phase, and it was helpful for my personal process. Everyone has a story to tell, and the providers that help get that story out are the ones who have the largest impact. Others don’t even have their personal story straight.

A part of my story will always be the time I spent trying to work in this industry. It was more of a removal of parts of myself, parts that felt I owed something to others due to my differences. I have good people around me now, people I believe at least are rooting for me, and that’s the best I could get where I’m at.

It’s a lot of pressure, being passionate, being motivated, having ambition. There are some parts of my story that are self inflicted. I’ve never fit, not even into the weird world of mental health professionals. It was the closest I came to fitting. Now I’ve given up trying to fit, and that’s a neutral fact in my recovery. I regret that I couldn’t keep trying, but over a decade of watching people experience the same degree of struggle from the outside, I can’t subject myself to it anymore.

I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I’m still healing.