Not feelin’ it

I had this experience about a week ago where I had the opportunity to spend some time socializing with my officemates in the breakroom. It was someone’s birthday, there was cake, and everyone took a break from inhaling lunch in front of laptops or in cars to converge on the breakroom and eat together. The office provided cake – sounds like a lovely way to spend a few minutes, right? Free food, yay! I arrived at the office after everyone had already relocated to the breakroom and, after grabbing my can of soup, I dutifully started toward the breakroom. The sounds of group laughter and voices erupted from the room as I approached it. At the sound of the group’s joy I stopped and thought about how I wanted to spend the next 20 minutes of my life. I decided to turn around and walk back to my office. I stayed in my office for the next 30 minutes until the lunch party broke up and then I pretended I had just gotten back from a meeting. Yeah, I know, it was really a mature way to handle the situation. I wished the birthday person a happy birthday and went to the breakroom to heat up my soup, which I ate in blissful silence. I don’t know what held me back from entering that breakroom and joining in the fun. I feel like I SHOULD have done it to be polite. All of the people who work in my office are polite and, for the most part, pleasant to be around. But, last week, wild horses could not have dragged me into that room.

I’ve been working with my door closed lately, which is abnormal for our office. We leave our doors open so that we can say hi to each person who enters/leaves the office. Did I mention my door is closest to the exit so I spend a good part of my day saying hi/bye and responding to nice or funny comments from my coworkers? Frankly it is distracting and I live in mild fear of hearing footsteps walking down the hall toward my office because I know I’m about to have to make a choice between purposefully ignoring someone (generally thought of as rude) or interrupting my workflow to interact with that person as they stride by. Interacting with so many people, even if the interaction only lasts a few seconds, gets to be exhausting. I’m sure the people in my office think I’m anti-social but some days I just don’t have the energy for all of that and I have to close my door.

For the past several weeks I have felt a little…raw. Like I need to be very conscious and purposeful about my choice of surroundings. I’ve been listening to softer music, cutting back on my exposure to violent media, avoiding crowded and loud situations, etc. I’m not sure where my need to do this is stemming from. There have been some big personal things that have happened over the past couple of months so perhaps it is a reaction to those. Whatever it is, I hope I can get a grip on it soon. My supervisor is going to notice if I continue to be anti-social and it doesn’t look good for supervisors to skip group work functions – we’re typically expected to be there with bells on and a cheerful word about how much we love the company. Ugh.

Pressure From All Sides

In my line of work we are called on to advocate on behalf of vulnerable populations. If it comes to getting my client a resource then I will call whoever I need to, talk to whoever’s supervisor that I need to, annoy whoever is standing in my way, etc. in order to try to get my client what they need. Any good social worker knows you sometimes have to act a bit…extra…. to get what you need for your client. In my personal life I can barely tell the waitress the kitchen messed up and put onions on my burger but professionally I will hunt down whoever is necessary to get my client’s needs met.

I’m good at advocating for individual clients. What I’m not so great at is advocating for a program or service in general. I’m not great at “selling” my program or my agency. I think our mission is extremely important and I’m proud of the work my staff do. But I’m not good at telling people about it, particularly people I perceive to be in a position of power. I’ve noticed my anxiety level is highly dependent on perceived power differentials. When I feel like I am in a position of more power, I tend to experience less anxiety (example, if I’m facilitating a training for staff – not if I’m doing something miserable like letting someone go or writing them up for something). Some people, when they feel powerless, are still able to have conversations and answer questions. Me, I totally blank out. I lose the ability to communicate any relevant information, I sweat profusely, start to stutter, and lose my voice. It’s not pretty.

Imagine my dismay when my supervisor tells me that I am going to have to start advocating with state leaders for funding for our services. In addition, I am to do this in conjunction with one of the employees I supervise. The thought of doing this causes me a great deal of anxiety. I will be forced to enter into situations with individuals who I perceive to have more power (state representatives) while accompanied by my employee (who I am expected to lead/set an example for). I will feel pressure from all sides. Pressure from my supervisor to be an articulate advocate for my organization, pressure from the state representative to succinctly sum things up and get out of their office, and then pressure from my employee to model effective advocacy behavior. It feels like, if I mess up or freak out, that not only will I be creating a bad impression of our agency to people who control important things like funding, I will also look like an ineffective supervisor.

Can’t I just write a letter or something? Why can’t we play to my strengths?!

I am dreading this new expectation of the job. Dreading it so much that my first (admittedly dramatic and not rational) thought was maybe I can quit before I’m expected to do start doing this.

So how am I going to deal with all of this? By taking some time to examine my irrational beliefs in the situation (there are a LOT), visualizing myself being successful in these situations, and learning more about how to effectively advocate with government leaders (something I don’t know anything about). Wish me luck!

Getting Back To It

So, it’s been over a year and a half since I posted anything. My father experienced a significant decline in his health in the beginning of 2018. He was diagnosed with heart disease when I was a small child and given a prognosis of 3-5 years. He outlived that prognosis by decades. When I was young, he explained to me that he didn’t have the kind of heart disease that would kill him quickly with a heart attack. Instead he had the kind of disease that would slowly take away his ability to function until he no longer had the energy or ability to move far from his bed. In late spring 2018 he died after a long, painful deterioration. It was the type of death that, when it finally came, was a relief to all involved.

Shortly after my father’s death, my employer lost the other main supervisor when that person found a job with better career advancement opportunities. Amid fresh grief, I was expected to advise and support staff working with clients I didn’t know who were in programs I only vaguely understood. As often happens with leadership change, some direct-care staff also exited the organization. This left the organization understaffed and remaining staff overworked. All this occurred at a time when I could barely concentrate long enough to finish reading a paragraph. My brain is an unfocused, forgetful, barely-able-to-process-information mess when it is grieving. It was not pretty.

For various reasons, it took quite some time to hire a replacement supervisor. While my supervisor was unfailingly kind, understanding, and verbally thankful for my additional work, the lack of financial acknowledgement that I was going above and beyond was disappointing. I have a friend who advised me to tell my supervisor how I felt and ask for additional compensation for my expanded duties. Perhaps in a future post I’ll delve into all of the reasons my social anxiety kept me from that course of action. The whole experience left me disillusioned. Overall, I still think my organization is a good place to work and compared to past jobs it remains one of the best. However, I no longer see myself working there for the long-term.

So, where does that leave me in this moment? For starters I’m finally starting to get a little bit of energy back. The first year was particularly difficult and looking back, it feels like those months went by in a chaotic daze as I binge watched TV shows, ate everything in sight, and felt guilty about not working on my dissertation. Going to work and dealing with the fallout of my father’s death took every ounce of energy I had. I felt like I was merely going through the motions of living my life. Thankfully, that is slowly starting to change. Grief is funny that way – sometimes it hits me like a tidal wave and other times it ebbs and flows so subtly that I almost don’t notice when it is gone. Of course, as soon as I notice its absence, it comes flooding back as I feel guilty for not feeling it. I always heard that it takes 3 years to grieve a close loss and fully integrate that loss into one’s life. I suppose I should take solace that I’m over 1/3 of the way there.

All of this is to say – I’m doing my best to get back to this blog. Supervising others while experiencing social anxiety did not, unsurprisingly, get any easier when I was grieving. I wish I had documented those times but, frankly, I didn’t have it in me. Hopefully now that has changed and this will become a regular thing moving forward.

How do I help an anxious employee?

So how do I deal with an employee with high anxiety? Particularly if I believe that anxiety is starting to negatively impact their work?

I have an employee I’m concerned about. Not a direct employee – I supervise the person who supervises this employee. Which makes it even trickier. My concerns are based on reports that I’m getting from this person’s manager. The employee’s anxiety has been a topic of concern since they were hired. We work with people diagnosed with serious mental illness who are often acutely sensitive to minor fluctuations in the moods and feelings of those around them. I think it is a type of survival mechanism many of our consumers develop – being aware of the moods of those around you can help you protect yourself (physically or emotionally). Our consumers are so vulnerable to abuse and mistreatment. I once worked with a consumer who was so sensitive to the tone and inflection in my voice that he could predict when I was getting sick 1-2 days before I noticed any symptoms. He would call the office and about 30 seconds into the conversation would ask if I was feeling ok. Inevitably, within a couple of days, I would start feeling bad. But, I digress.

Back to where I was going before – our consumers know when staff are anxious and sensing anxiety in a staff member can be a trigger for a consumer’s anxiety. We need to do everything we can to ensure a calm atmosphere in our programs to help our consumers maintain their recovery.

This employee experiences a high amount of anxiety. They express fear on a near-constant basis that something they did during his shift will result in them being fired. The employee has been with us for less than 6 months, so naturally there have been mistakes as they were becoming more familiar with our agency policies and procedures. This is expected as someone is learning a new job and hasn’t been a big deal. Frankly, compared to many other new employees, this person’s mistakes have been minor and infrequent.

However, whenever the supervisor brings up a mistake and talks about the way to do things differently in the future, this employee almost has a panic attack. They sweat profusely, their body shakes, and they have trouble talking. The supervisor has tried to be as sensitive as possible to this anxiety but we’re starting to feel that it impairs the employee’s ability to make solid decisions. The fear of losing their job has resulted in the employee sharing important information with his co-workers but not bringing it to his supervisor (out of fear he will get in trouble). This has resulted in an uncomfortable situation between the employee, their co-workers (who of course tell the supervisor when it is a concern about one of the consumers), and the program supervisor. It’s feels like a super-awkward game of telephone. It’s not healthy for the staff dynamics in the home.

So, my dilemma is this, at what point is this anxiety too much for our program? The employee has shared that they take medication for panic attacks so it sounds like they are getting treatment from somebody. As an agency we want to be understanding of someone’s symptoms and support them in getting symptom relief/learning to cope with them. I want to give this employee the opportunity to get their anxiety under control. We’re a pretty relaxed and tolerant program. We give our staff lots of feedback and opportunity to address any performance concerns. In addition, I understand what anxiety is like and I know sometimes it makes it hard for me to do everything I need to do at my job. Heck, at this point I have anxiety about THEIR anxiety which is making it difficult for me to focus on other aspects of my job. The program supervisor is working on getting the team on the same page and trying to reassure this anxious staff that their job is not in jeopardy (yet).

This employee has some important strengths and I think they could do well in our agency. But, if this anxiety continues to negatively impact other staff or we see if impact our consumers, then we will eventually need to let them go. Which will make me feel like a hypocrite. An unfeeling, unsympathetic hypocrite.

What would you do in this situation? Would love to hear some advice on this one.

Braving the gym

I almost let my anxiety run me out of the gym without working out this afternoon. But first, a little backstory.

First, I HATE GYMS. I think they are awful. I’ve yet to meet a gym that I felt comfortable at. So many people I don’t know, so much spandex, I sweat profusely, so much…everything. Did I mention I once passed out in my college gym while on a treadmill and broke my nose? I absolutely hate gyms. However, desperate times call for desperate measures. Over the summer I started jogging again both to lose some weight (the Freshman 15 is nothing compared to the Ph.D. 40) and to help with my stress level. I completed the Couch to 5K plan and kept up the jogging for 2-3X/week through the first couple weeks of the Fall semester.

Then, as usual when I’m stressed, my exercise (and self-care) inevitably trailed off until I wasn’t exercising at all. There was weight gain. I’m talking the kind of weight gain that keeps you from wearing 85% of your clothing (at this point, I’ve only got 4 outfits I can wear to work). I was eating sweets every day and using the drive thru with too much frequency. In addition to not looking great, I felt gross and uncomfortable in my clothes. I kept telling myself that when classes ended I would get back to jogging and yoga. Not surprisingly, when classes ended a few weeks ago, I did not start jogging (it’s cold!) or doing yoga at home.

I have a professional conference I’m presenting some of my research at in Washington, D.C. in mid-January. My first one so of course I’m anxious about the whole thing. It’s a requirement for school. Adding to that anxiety is concern (terror) about whether I’m going to have anything appropriate to wear. All my “professional” clothing is too tight. I don’t mean a little snug, I mean that it looks borderline obscene and rips if I try to sit down. I’m really strapped for cash, shelling out for this conference already added over $1000 to my credit card, so I really can’t afford to go out and buy a suit in a larger size.

That’s how I ended up with a gym membership. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make myself start jogging in the cold weather. So, I joined Planet Fitness because they are the least expensive gym in town (see above comment about lack of funds) and I’m desperate to lose weight so I can fit into my clothing. I broke down and did that on Friday (today is Monday). I’ve been each day since Friday (except Saturday – we helped a friend move which counted as my daily workout). The first couple of days weren’t too bad – I managed to find times that the gym was relatively empty. The physical set up is not great for me – I wish there was a set of stairs that didn’t require me to walk across an open floor to get to the second floor– the workout equipment on the second floor is less intimidating.

Today was very unpleasant. It was a bad day at work. I went to the gym as planned, changed into my workout clothes, and looked in the mirror (MISTAKE). I realized that, what was an appropriate workout shirt to wear outside in the August heat, showed more of my body than I was comfortable with now that I was inside of a building with a bunch of people I didn’t know. I wanted to put my regular clothes back on and run out of there. I almost did. It took me several minutes to convince myself to walk about of the locking room. The walk to the stairs was so uncomfortable – I felt that everyone was staring and judging me. Logically I know that most of the people in that gym didn’t give a flying **** about me or my clothing, but it felt as though they were all looking in my direction.

I managed to make it up the stairs and onto an elliptical machine in the corner. Which was fine until ten minutes later when two women started using other machines near me. I heard them and almost stopped my workout and ran back to the locker room. The idea of them being so close when I was feeling vulnerable because of my clothing and crappy day was a lot to handle. I didn’t fully do my cool down because I was so eager to get out of there. I called my sister before I left the locker room, so I didn’t have to make eye contact or interact with anyone on my way out.

So, obviously today was not a pleasant experience for me. However, I want to try to identify some positives in the situation to lessen the memory of my anxiety

1. Despite my mind and my body telling me to run away, I did not. Yay for
me!

2. I managed to walk across the open space to access the stairs to the
second floor…twice. Despite my fear and discomfort.

3. I was able to continue using the machine when surprised by other gym
patrons. My anxiety was present but did not prevent me from
accomplishing my goal.

Tomorrow, the real test comes. After such an unpleasant experience, will my anxiety convince me to skip tomorrow’s workout? It will be a battle between my desire for health and my desire to not be around people. Who will win?

As always, ending on happy doggie note. Check out the picture of the pup above. He’s so sweet when he sleeps.

Slowing Down Is Almost Worse

Hello all! I know it’s been a while since I’ve written anything. As you can probably tell by my last post, life was pretty hectic for a while. There was family illness, work chaos, and school pressure. It took all of my energy to get out of bed and run from one responsibility to the next. I had no time or energy left over self-reflection (my mind/body were in survival mode). Things have calmed down for now (knock on wood) so I’m hoping posting can be a regular thing again.

As I mentioned, there was little time for me to think about myself or life over the past several months. In a way, there is something I find comfortable and familiar in being over-booked and stressed. I don’t always like it but I’ve felt like that so many times in my life that it is almost reassuring – I know how to be in survival mode. My path forward is always clear when life is like that. I just need to do whatever is necessary to make it to the next minute. I don’t have to think as much, it is almost like I turn part of that anxious brain off for a brief time. I know how to function as a stressed out individual. I’m not saying I like it. Nobody enjoys not sleeping, lack of exercise, and binge eating. It makes my body feel gross and then I stress more at the fact that I’m not taking care of myself.

BUT, honestly, sometimes not feeling overwhelmed and at the end of my rope is worse. I don’t know what to do when I’m not pulled in 50 different directions. If I’m not thinking about others then I have to pay attention to myself. It’s uncomfortable and unnerving to do that. I have to think about things that are going on in my mind and my body. I have to think about why I feel angry at people in my life that I care about. I have to think about why I don’t feel fulfilled or satisfied with some aspects of my life. I have to deal with an underlying desire for more in life, even though can’t identify what “more” I want. I have to face feelings that I am trapped in some ways. Trapped in a life of repetition, in a cycle of work -> home -> cook dinner -> watch TV -> sleep -> work again without end. It feels like I’m being smothered by monotony. There is no escape from this cycle because that’s just how life is – it’s how we survive.

I could go on and on, getting darker and darker in my thought process, but I’ll stop there. This is why I stay busy, this is why I take on too much, and this is why I over-extend myself. Because it’s easier to walk around thinking about how much I have to do than to thinking about some intangible thing (“more”) that I can neither define nor achieve. I’m aware that this desire for something is part of my anxiety – the opposite part side of being anxious about juggling a bunch of different responsibilities. I’m less familiar with this side of my anxiety – it’s particularly disconcerting. I’m looking forward to when an onslaught of responsibilities and problems return – at least I know what to do with all of that!

Last, but not least, check out the pictures of the pups at the top! They are rarely still enough for me to take a picture of all 3 but I lucked out the other morning. Just wanted to end this on a positive note!

Significant Others & Anxiety

“Oh, you started a blog? Can I read it?”

NO!

I’m sitting here with a glass of wine (a rarity for me on a weekday) mulling over the above conversation and how odd it is that the person who should know the most about me/my anxiety is the person that I try the hardest to hide it from. My husband. With whom I do everything in my power NOT to talk about my mental health.

Admittedly, this is ridiculous. We live together, it’s pretty hard to hide when your mental health is not stellar from someone who is around you each night. He knows I experience anxiety, particularly social anxiety. It’s what keeps me from wanting to go hang out with our friends on the weekends, what causes me to decline attending his work events (for the first year his work teased him about not believing I was a real person – so now he keeps a picture of our wedding on his desk), what causes me to recoil every time he suggests traveling to see an old friend of his, and occasionally (not proud of this one) what, in the past, caused me to drink too much when I was around his friends to help me make it through an evening with people I barely knew. He’s pretty darn familiar with my anxiety. No doubt he’s been making excuses for years to explain my behavior.

Nevertheless, I prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist. I can talk about it in the abstract – that I have it, it’s often a problem, and these are the situations when it typically increases. But, for whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to point out my anxiety in the moment. It’s too hard for me to say “I feel really anxious today and I don’t know why” or “my anxiety made it really hard to do ___ today and I did/did not do what I needed to.”  Instead I use code words (I know they’re code words, I haven’t figured out if my husband does) like “I’m really tired,” “I don’t feel well,” or “It was just a tough day.”

I’m aware that this is poor communication on my part. If I had a client doing this I would urge them to work on their communication skills ASAP. I’ve made great strides since moving back to my hometown in talking to my parents and siblings openly about my anxiety (wish I could have done that as a teenager). I can talk to friends about it until I’m blue in the face. But, I hit this roadblock when I think about being brutally honest with my husband. Maybe it’s part of my own denial – if I can make him think that I’m ok then it’s easier to lie to myself when I’m struggling. Maybe I just don’t want to appear weak or needy to him. Whatever it is, it’s dysfunctional and I need to work on it. End of musings.

I’m including a picture of my puppy because he is too cute for words and it’s a happy way to end this post about my dysfunctional communication habits. Tell me he doesn’t have the sweetest face! He’s chilling in my big reading chair in my office, where he usually hangs out while I do my classwork each night. 

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Loss – Personal and Professional

It has been a while since I’ve posted anything. My summer has mostly consisted of getting back into jogging (I’d like to say running but frankly it’s a slow jog that gives the other patrons of the park plenty of time to notice my sweaty, tomato-red face. It may look like I ran a marathon but I didn’t come close), building up my vegetable garden, procrastinating studying for my preliminary exams in August, and work. Things were going along with relatively few hiccups until about 3 weeks ago when my work world crashed and burned.

Three weeks ago today, I received a call from a fireman calling from my employee’s cell phone. One of my clients had passed away overnight (natural causes) and the employee who found the client was too distraught to speak to me on the phone. Naturally I called my supervisor and we all rushed to the program. As you can imagine that morning was a chaotic rush of communication with coroners, family members, employees, staffing agencies to cover staff time off for recovery, etc. After everyone left the program I cleaned the client’s room so that none of my staff would have to do it while they were grieving. Times like this are difficult in work settings because my reactions have to come last. First I have to support my clients with managing their emotions and then I have to support my staff with managing their emotions. Only once I was alone in the client’s room did I finally get to experience my emotions and have a nice cry.

I have lost clients before (my population dies, on average, 25 years earlier than the general population) and the loss of this client did not count as my most traumatic experience with client death. Nonetheless, I was very fond of the client we lost and had always felt a special connection with her. She was a client of mine in the job that I had before my current one. When she entered our program I met her family and realized that we were neighbors when I was a child. Due to the age difference between me and the client we didn’t know each other back then. However, it was very likely she saw me riding my bike or playing in the front yard at some point. The client had gone through some major struggles but had been doing wonderfully in the past several months. The family said the client was acting the way she did years ago when she was healthier. That made her death particularly poignant. To struggle for so long and work so hard to be healthy, only to pass away before getting the opportunity to fully enjoy your health is tragic. She had so much more to give the world.

Three weeks later my staff is still grieving her loss. The other client in the home has many questions and is struggling with being without roommates. The employee who found the client is having difficulty processing everything and has taken time off to cope with the experience. The program is just trying to stay above water. I’m struggling to reconcile two sides of myself: the social worker side who wants to be infinitely patient and understanding vs the administrative side of me who has to make sure that the remaining client is taken care of and the program continues to run as smoothly as possible. The temptation to treat your employees as clients is strong at times like this. The therapist in me wants to provide counseling and treatment but a good supervisor has to realize where the boundaries are. I can’t be their therapist – that is not my role in their lives. I can be supportive and understanding but the needs of the program also have to be kept in mind and balanced.

The loss of a client is never easy. I don’t know if our clients ever realize how much we care about them. I still think about some of my clients from my first social work job and worry about how they are doing. When a client passes away you always wonder – could I have done anything different that would have changed this outcome? The first client I lost nearly broke me – the circumstances surrounding the finding of that client’s body were horrible. I had trouble with flashbacks and intrusive thoughts for several months. I blamed myself for the death and was convinced I could have changed the outcome somehow if I had just been a better social worker, a stronger clinician, checked on the client more often, etc. Each time I lose a client, a part of me flashes back to the loss of that first client. It took me a long time, and help from some amazing supervisors, to heal from that experience.

Now I want to be the amazing supervisor who helps their employee through a traumatic experience. I’m worried I don’t have what it takes. I’m worried the program will continue to spiral down and I won’t be able to save it. I’m worried about a lot right now.

(Did I mention I have a massive 4 hour examination about statistics and research in 14 days and if I don’t pass it that I can’t continue with my doctoral program? No pressure)

Oh, and I’m making the featured image for this post my (still growing) puppy because he is silly and make me laugh. He is super long when he stretches out!

Hiring New Employees – UGH

One of the most awkward parts of my job is when it becomes necessary to hire a new employee for one of my programs. Combing through resumes, contacting applicants to see if they meant to apply for the job or are interested in it (I get a lot of people who don’t read the job description), and managing to get them to show up for an interview is challenging and often annoying. That is not the worst part. The worst part is the interview process – so uncomfortable for me (no doubt also uncomfortable for the poor soul that I’m interviewing).

Let’s all agree that interviews are awkward for all involved. Both sides are sizing up the other to try to figure out if they will be able to work together. I’m looking for red flags to indicate this person won’t be a good fit at the agency while they’re scrutinizing me to figure out if I’m going to be somebody they wouldn’t be miserable working for. It’s an odd dynamic. While I’m evaluating them I’m simultaneously trying to sell them on our agency and why they want to work for us. That’s a problem because I’m not a good salesperson. I tried to sell those Cutco knives one summer in my teens and it was a disaster! My parents and sisters were the only ones who bought anything, mostly out of pity.

So here’s what typically happens when I interview someone. First, setting up the interview can be really challenging for me. Picking up the phone to call someone who sent me a resume creates a lot of anxiety for me. It’s one of those things that I try to do right before lunch or at the end of the day so that I can leave work soon after – that way if I feel embarrassed about my phone performance I don’t have to sit in the office and analyze the conversation for several hours. If I’m lucky then the person will be tech savvy and I can set something up over email – I love those! However, some of our positions tend to attract applicants who don’t have a lot of experience with computers so I can’t always rely on email for communication.

The day of the interview I’m often anxious when I wake up. I try to look a little nicer than usual (actually wear makeup, not wear jeans, etc.) to give myself a confidence boost. Sometimes I wear red because I once heard it was a “power color.” Whatever that means? I figure it can’t hurt the situation.

I’m so anxious while interviewing a potential employee. My throat gets dry and I drink so much water that the poor person I’m interviewing likely thinks I have a medical condition. My words get stuck in my throat and sometimes my voice cracks or does weird level/pitch changes against my will. I tend to get hot and sweat a little. The more anxious I get the more my sentences start to go in circles or just trail off because I don’t know what to say next. I repeat myself A LOT. I know, what a lovely visual – red faced, sweating, unable to get words out of my mouth (don’t forget my essential tremor so my hands are shaking), and gulping down multiple bottles of water. Wouldn’t you want to work for me?!

I will say that my interviewing skills are better than they used to be (yes, if you can imagine, my interviews were once MORE awkward). Lots of practice has resulted in a slight lessening of the anxiety and more comfort with some of the questions I have to ask (i.e. Can you pass a background check? What about 3? Can you pass a drug screen? How is your driving record?) I’m hopeful that in the future, with much more practice, my anxiety level during interviews will continue to decrease. My goal is to, one day, interview a potential employee without sweating or stammering. It’s a lofty goal, but I think I can do it.

Keeping It Together – Even When You Don’t Want To

I received some sad news this morning. A former client passed away over the weekend and the funeral is tomorrow. They left the agency several months ago because they needed a higher level of care. This is the second former client who has died in the last 30 days. Losing clients (even if they’re former, you will always think of them as your client) is never easy. As a social worker I’m privileged to be involved in intimate details of people’s lives. I wouldn’t be in this line of work if I didn’t care deeply about those I work with. A professional hazard is that you will inevitably lose each client – many will recover and move on (YAY), some will drop out and you’ll never hear from them again, and some will die before their time.

I work with individuals diagnosed with serious mental illness. They are vulnerable to homelessness, abuse, poverty, lack of access to nutritious food, unhealthy lifestyle habits (smoking, lack of exercise due to illness or because of fatigue from medications), etc. People with these diagnoses tend to die about 25 years sooner than the general population. This means that the death of a client in their 40s or 50s is not unusual.

One of the things that has made the deaths of the two clients this month so difficult is that I needed to support my staff and other clients with the grieving process while I also grieve. Today was a difficult day. First stop this morning was to tell the other clients and answer their questions to help them start to process their grief. The next job was notifying all the staff who worked with this person and supporting any of them who needed to talk. In addition, there was my regular workload. All of this had to happen while I was feeling quite sad and somewhat guilty that I hadn’t followed up with the former resident and visited them in the nursing home the way I intended.

I think that all of us, at some point in our daily lives, have needed to keep our own reactions in check in order to make sure thing get taken care of. Sometimes this must be done daily. So how do we keep it together when all we want to do is fall apart? Here are my suggestions:

• Acknowledge your feelings – To the best of your ability in your situation acknowledge that you’re not feeling 100%. Depending on what’s been going on, a simple “I’m not at my best today” may be helpful. If you don’t feel comfortable saying this in your work environment then at least acknowledge it to yourself. Give yourself a break if you find that you’re not working as quickly or as accurately as usual. We all have off days. You are human, you’re allowed to not be perfect.

 

• Talk it out – If you have someone you trust at work then go to them and ask if you can share some of your thoughts. Be mindful when choosing who to help you process thoughts or feeling. For example, I wouldn’t go to one of the staff I supervised to talk about feeling sad at the loss of this client because I’m supposed to be the one supporting them. I’m honest with staff about my feelings – I can tell them that I feel sad about the death of the former client but for a deeper exploration of my feelings I seek out either a supervisor or someone else in the company that I don’t supervise.

 

• Set aside time to fully experience your emotions – I learned this from a former supervisor who specialized in treating other therapists. It is very useful when sitting with a client who is sharing tragic or horrifying personal details. If you’re in a situation where you can’t react the way you really want to (cry, scream, curse), then make yourself a promise. Identify a time later that day when you can react the way you want to and tell yourself that you can put those thoughts and feelings on hold until that time. The trick to this is that when the identified time comes, you MUST keep the promise you made to yourself and allow yourself to think whatever sad, negative, irrational thoughts that you ignored earlier. If you promise yourself a time to react, put your feelings on hold, and later don’t give yourself what you promised then you stifle your emotions which will impede healing or coping with whatever is going on. I find this one helpful when I have intrusive sad or anxious thoughts that are keeping me from doing my work. Once I tell myself I’m going to deal with those thoughts later in the day I’m able to refocus on what I need to do.

 

• Take care of yourself – When you are struggling it is crucial to take good physical care of yourself. Your mind is already going through a lot, don’t make it also have to deal with a body that feels unhealthy. You may have the urge to eat ¾ of the birthday cake in the break room left over from yesterday’s celebration (been there, done that), but try to keep yourself to a regular-sized piece. Drink lots of water and minimize your caffeine intake. If possible, take a short walk during a lunch break. Eat whole fruits and vegetables. Try doing some gentle stretching.

As always, some (or none!) of my suggestions may be helpful or effective in your situation. I can only share the things that help me. I would love to hear ways other people make it through their day when it’s an extra struggle?