An Introduction: drugs, death and my decision to be a social worker (EP.1)

An introduction to the podcast, who I am and my journey into social work. A massive thank you to Vicki, from Social Work sorted who is an inspiration and gave very helpful advice, DO NOT MISS her podcast: https://www.socialworksorted.com/aboutme


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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to rich Devine social work, practice podcast. I am And I am a social worker. This podcast is about practice related issues. Self-development and transformation. It will give you the knowledge, ideas, and practical tools for being an effective social Support in you. With assessment skills, direct work, dealing with conflict and other related issues. And importantly, helping you make a positive difference in the lives of children and families. Today, I'm super excited. Although You would never guess from the tone of my voice, because I tend to have quite a monotone. Voice, but I am super excited is this is going to be the, this is the first episode. And I want to give a quick Sharma to Vicki from social work sorted. Who has been an inspiration and has given me some much needed advice and guidance. This up and running. And I fought, I would use this first episode as a way to introduce and share a little bit about myself. I'd been a social worker. For 12 years, I qualified in 2010. I started my social work journey, quite young because I left six form. Ended up doing a program called the princess trust, went to college for two years and then started my degree. Began practicing. In. 2010 when I was. 20. To I And I spent seven years working in long-term child protection teams across two Forties. And I learned a vast amount in those roles. And I was in the middle of doing my masters in attachment studies. And I really didn't want to move into management, but I was struggling with the demands and pressures of case management. Alongside the study. And so fortunately there was a role was a community based parent in the SASA. Which I jumped at the opportunity to do, because it allowed me to continue working with children and families, which I'm really passionate about. But man, I didn't have the responsibilities and the demands and the excessive workload, I think that comes along with. Being a case Holt in social worker. More recently, I become a consultant social worker. Which means that I still do my parents and assessments, but that also. I have some responsibility for workforce development. So I wanted to. In relation to my gurney. And Herschel work and, I mean years back. I wrote a blog. Called fuck dat for Mike. Social worker. I'm going to read some, some parts of that blog as a way of sharing my journey into. There's work. And also, I think it will touch on some of the themes. That we'll be exploring then the blog. Not in the blog, sorry. In the podcast. Such as issues related to effective social work, practice self-development and transformation. So. I begin. By reading a little AXA from my. That diary. And then I'll provide a little bit of a context of our weather when that was, when that was written and what was going on. But him. So he writes. Woke up feeling very scared was very emotional and anxious, but over one year femme, I remembered I had a can of beer. Drank them. And it receded my fears long enough to get to the chemist, to pick up my volume. Went back to bed. Okay. So that was the perspective of my dad at one point to my childhood. He died when I was 16 years old after he spent most of my. At the lessons using drugs and alcohol, or he was in rehabilitation. And when he was in rehab, my dad wrote about his life, which I now realize would have been an exercise to help him make sense of his experiences. It's something that I've actually done quite a lot. And I think it's a really powerful tool for helping. People make sense of their. Experiences, particularly if they've been through. Traumatic. Difficulties. There's some really interesting research by a guy called James Pennebaker. Who's looked at the therapeutic benefits of writing about experiences. In any He he wrote about his life when he was in rehab. And I rent this after he died and he wrote the, I was the first child of his born into sobriety and I'm the youngest of five. And I think he was probably quite proud of that. And in his mid thirties and probably for the first time in his adult life. Well, not probably, I know it was the first time in his life. He achieved sobriety. And he went to college, either, went to university and worked as a social worker in child protection for a few years. Fortunately for me, that provided me some stability during my formative years. However, when I was eight or nine, he resigned from work on how health grounds. And part of that was tied to working excessively long hours. And then he quickly relapsed into drug and alcohol use. And after his death, when, when I was 16 years old, my mum told me that he'd become a social worker, so he could prevent. What had happened to him from happening to others? But my dad. Was a child. He was removed from his parents' care, separate from his siblings and placed into different foster homes and residential homes. And one of the homes that he. Was placed in, he was abused by those that were employed to care for him. And so he didn't want others to have the type of experiences that he'd had. And when I heard this from my mom. This idea that she, that he wanted to stop. What happened to him from hat to happen into others? I decided at that point that I would become a social worker and subsequently I enrolled in college. And I thought to myself at the time, I want to be able to finish off what he was. He wasn't able to. My train then. And from my post qualifying years, when I was asked, why did you become a social worker? Is a very common question. I would often tell people that I wanted to work with children and families in a way that made a positive difference. And that is true, but it's also somewhat superficial. And slightly socially acceptable. So. And I think. There's an element where my desire to present as a selfless and virtuous social work, social worker. Conceals the complexity and awareness to myself and others of the more candid self-serve and reasons to do the work. I do. think Kaufman talks about this idea that we tend to conceal or underplay the activities, facts, and motives. Which were in a compatible with the idyllic idealized versions of ourselves. So. I only learned about this. In 2012. So. A couple of years after I'd been qualified. And I was in a conference community care conference. And there was a psychotherapist and he was explaining that many of us in the helping profession are often attempting to rescue. Our childhood selves vicariously through helping others. And suddenly what my mum had told me about my dad's reasoning for becoming a social worker several years prior now had new meaning. I realized that my dad was attempting to rescue his child to itself. It also occurred to me that I was attempting to rescue my dad's childhood self. On his behalf. And I think most probably. Because when my dad relay. Relapsed into drugs and alcohol when he was nine or 10 years old. He became physically and emotionally less available to me. And I experienced that. As a form of rejection. My child itself experienced that as a form of rejection. And when I look back now, cognitively. I know that it was related to the drugs and alcohol, but that's not necessarily how my childhood self experienced it on an emotional level. I often say that my dad died a few thousand times psychologically speaking, before he actually died. One of the ways that I learned to cope with that was to shut emotionally and then try and please, or make him a little bit happier because that brought out a better version of him. So over the years, I realized that there were connections between my childhood and my motivation to be a social worker. And I would say that my understanding's been massively aided by. My learning of attachment theory in particular. Patricia Crittenden's dynamic maturational model. And that was the model that helped me to realize that I'd developed this coping strategy what's referred to in the DMM as a self-protective strategy to handle the experiences. That were afforded to me in. In my childhood. And I'll just return to my dad's life Another from his IRA. Because he described the period in which he relapsed during my middle childhood, he writes. After I left my job, I took one pill and within a short period, I was a fully fledged out cake and druggie. My son, Richard saw some of the old behavior that he had never experienced before. And now I feel this has contaminated This discuss me. As I've just mentioned when I was a child, I just experienced him as increasingly unavailable. And simultaneous to my dad, substance misuse, my mum also became depressed and developed. Chronic fatigue syndrome. And I wouldn't have happened. Language or the knowledge at the time, but through learning. The dynamic maturational model. I have come to understand that instinctively and without awareness, I've learned ways to adapt to the parents that I had during this. Period of my childhood. And that was What I had to do was to deal with the rejection. W which was unbearably painful. And to utilize what limited availability they had to attend to me. I dampen down my dependence in needs and then suppressed and heat. Feelings of sadness. Or anger. Having learned that my parents just weren't going to be able to support me with those feelings. Rural life established. Was don't express feelings. Furthermore, I sought to please and applicate my unwell mom, because when I did this, I elicited a more favorable reaction. And I established a second rule. Constantly think about and anticipate my mom's needs. And so these two rules combined led to the development of a largely unconscious strategy. One minimizing my own need to anticipate in meeting the needs of others. So in attachment terms, this is called a compulsive caregiving strategy. Now this time my dad died. What I was 16. I was unable to acknowledge, let alone process any negative feelings about the experience. And dismissed the way, the significance of his death. Interestingly at the same time. And I don't think in coincidentally I developed asthma. I think my understanding about the relationship of asthma. In the context of trauma. Was facilitated by a book called when the body says no by Gabor motto. And during my late. Adolescence and into my adulthood, I grew familiar with a sense of Thanks. Sense of inadequacy and worthlessness. That derived from having my emotions unintentionally yet persistently ignored and devalued by my mum and dad. And so my child self. I couldn't separate the rejection of feelings. I couldn't separate the rejection of my feelings from the rejection of my fundamental self. And as a consequence I felt unlovable or unworthy fundamentally a core level inadequate and. Not good enough. So. It's not really surprising, therefore, that I chose a profession in which its ethos is to care for others in particular. Vulnerable lovers. And I found a home, I would say that enabled the perpetuation of my self protective strategy. No, I only did sexually can to address the need to care for others. But it also is a really demanding, pressurized extremely busy working environment. And that is a perfect, or be it. Unhealthy way to avoid confronting my feelings. I have to admit that it also became my identity, a kind of idealized image of myself as self-sacrificing hard-working individual within the care profession. And there is a slight reputation that, that I think. Child protection, social work has about it. Be an especially difficult that for some reason I found attractive. Okay. Karen Horney a psychologist. Right backing right back in 1945. That a person builds up an idealized image of him or herself because she or he cannot tolerate him or herself as she, or he actually is. And so becoming a social worker. With this. Idealized positive, socially acceptable image. Was this a substitute, I suppose, to compensate for the feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. That. Derived. Five as a result of my, my parents not being available in the way that I needed them to be. And I say. To kind of come to a conclusion about all of this. I would say that learning about myself protective strategy was an incredibly agonizing process because I have to acknowledge all the painful feelings that. Had up until then denied and inhibited. And John Bowlby refers to this psychological process of denial and, and in the Bitfinex. And his defensive exclusion. And he wrote back in 1918, the information likely to be defensively excluded is of a kind that when accepted for processing in the past has led the person concerned. To suffer more or less severely. So the question is what information was I defensively excluded. For me. Being rejected by my parents were psychologically in polar rubble feelings of shame. Worthiness and being unlovable we're in phase two, the too much tobacco. Sorry, shut myself off from there. And so. I've had to recognize that my motivation for being a social worker, wasn't simply reflection of my intrinsic goodness or. My virtuous values. Rather a convenient and acceptable socially acceptable avenue to acne, to an app dial. My eye and conscious strategy. In fact. It was probably both, but, but on reflection. I have to. I have to admit that it was probably more the former I E the strategy. But recognizing this has really enabled me to align my motivation much more with my consciously arrived in 10. And values. Introspective endeavor into my rationale and motivation for being a social worker. I would say a span over several years and it's still an ongoing process. And it's up to processes facilitated psychological adjustment. But he's also given me insight, I would say, into the challenges for parents in achieving change. Even when the benefits outweigh the negatives. And in that sense, it has a big influence on my practice. Lisa. Cherry. It does lots of brilliant work around trauma wrote in a brilliant blog. That you can only meet someone. As deeply as you've met yourself. And this is an idea that parallels with Carl Young's view that. And I'll quote him actually, because he he'll say it better than I can paraphrase. The analyst must go on learning endlessly. We could say. Without too much exaggeration. The good half of every treatment consists of the doctor examining himself. For only what he can put right in. In himself. Can he hope to put right in the patient? No, it's the end of the quake. Now, obviously he's coming from a psychotherapeutic context and I'm not necessarily saying that. The psychotherapy. Therapeutic. Then's. Applies necessarily to social work. But I do think there's something about reflecting on our own experiences and the way that that we've learned to cope. And how those coping strategies. For better or worse, continue to influence our functioning and our relationships with other people. And if we give ourselves the opportunity to reflect on those experiences, It might give us insight into our motivation, but it also might aid us in understanding why some of the parents that we work with. Struggled to make some of the changes that they need to make. And I'm part of that is that some of the. Some of the ways that they're functioning currently that are causing them and their children difficulty. Are also the same ways that help them cope and survive. We've often a very difficult and adverse set of experiences in that childhood. And so they've developed these ways of coping and then they've. Embedded them psychologically, often they become unconscious and then they get carried forward into adulthood. Awareness. Well, I think. When we really understand. Our reasons for becoming social workers, we decrease the risk of our unconscious rationales. Unintentionally motivate in our decision-making. And our behavior. And clear in ourselves of our personal pursuits. The laurels is the freedom to change our relationship to our work. And it detangles From the natural complexities. Of our power. That's a. Overview or off. My work, I'm what I'm doing. And an introduction via a blog that I wrote. About my decision to become a social worker. So thank you. If you've made it all the way from this first episode. I'm really looking forward to explore the issues around undertaken assessments and doing direct work, dealing with conflict. And. Really get into explore. Issues that I think will aid you as a frontline practitioner. To do that, to do the work that you would like to be So many fans for listening to this episode, if you haven't already, then please consider subscribing or sharing with your colleagues. And I would love it. If you leave a comment positive or negative or feedback is very welcome. And finally, if you have any topics, You would like me to explore or anybody that you would like to speak to, please do get in touch.