How to survive in social work

 

One day, while I was still working in a Community Mental Health Team, one of our nurses returned to base in tears. She had been visiting one of her patients, a woman with bipolar affective disorder. She knew she was relapsing and had been trying to support her and her relatives and had been striving to avoid a hospital admission for several days.

The patient had shouted at her. She hurled very personal insults at her. She berated her for failing in her job, for letting her down, for not being a good enough nurse. It hit a nerve with my colleague. It triggered her deepest fears. Was she a bad nurse? Was she incompetent? Could she have done more to prevent this crisis? Was she so useless? Should she hand her notice in right away?

The team did their best to support and comfort her. She was a good enough nurse. She had done her best. She had seen a relapse coming, and she had done everything she professionally could to avert it.

This incident made me think about how mental health and other care professionals survive the job. It made me think about how I had managed to continue to function as a (hopefully) effective social worker for four decades.

In my first few months as a social worker, I was allocated Gwen. She and her children were very well known to services and had had many social workers over the years. I was the latest.

I knocked a little nervously on her front door, and when she opened it I introduced myself.

She looked me up and down and did not seem very impressed.

“Well, you’d better come in I suppose, she said, scowling.

I followed her into her front room. She closed the door behind me, took a deep breath and then proceeded to treat me to a tirade of complaints and insults which continued for at least 30 minutes. Throughout this deluge of vituperation, I stood silently and listened diligently.

I stood there mortified. Judging by her comments, I was the very worst and most totally useless social worker in the entire world.

While this destruction of my character continued, it suddenly occurred to me that this had nothing to do with me at all. She was ventilating. She was expressing her anger and despair at the system, and at the world in general. I just happened to be conveniently there. It wasn't personal. It wasn't about me at all.

I learned right then that if I were to survive as a social worker, I had to separate the professional persona and my professional functions from the personal, from the individual me. As I realised this, I suddenly felt a lot better. I waited patiently for her to finish, then got on with the job in hand. She never shouted at me again.

It's a simple lesson, but not necessarily easy to learn. But it helped me to deal with the often hostile and verbally aggressive people who I have had to assess under the Mental Health Act.

It has even helped me to remain mentally intact and sufficiently detached to manage the few occasions when I have been physically assaulted during the course of my work.

It's not actually about you.