Field Journals

How are you doing in regards to your self-care plan?

We talked about self-care in one of my classes the other day, and our teacher warned us against workaholism. One student in class admitted that she had recently taken home some work from her internship, and our teacher said that the student should never do that. We must realize that we’re not superheroes, and we need to set clear boundaries.

Now I appreciate my teacher’s warning. I’m sure that workaholism has ruined many social workers and as a consequence has hurt many of their clients. And yet as I sat there in class, I realized that I didn’t completely agree. I take home work from my internship all the time. I spend not an insignificant amount of time every week doing stuff for my internship after I’ve left it. And while I fully agree that this type of behavior can diminish one’s ability to care for himself or herself, I believe it has actually improved my ability to care for myself.

I cannot be happy if I feel that my life is not meaningful. I could be taking long walks on the beach every morning, having the most amazing sex every afternoon, spend my evenings drinking fine wine and eating endless gelato. And yet these activities alone would leave me feeling dead inside. I need more in life. I need to know that I’m working towards some purpose, that I’m making a difference.

I wouldn’t commend workaholism to everyone, but I can see that for some people, working long hours, working most weekends, is an elixir, a salvation. Had I not worked these extra hours for my internship, I know that I would not have excelled as I have. My skill set would still be low. I wouldn’t be helping the kids at my school as I now am. Consequently, I would feel like a failure. I would feel hopeless and depressed.

I’m not trying to be naive. I know that people can burn out, and that’s a very dangerous thing. My point is that everyone is different. I know myself, and I know my limits, and I know that if I don’t push myself really hard, harder than most, my life starts to feel meaningless, and once I start to feel like that I’m beset by overwhelming depression.

My teacher’s limits (“don’t take work home”) might work for her, but for me they would be an existential death sentence. There are times when I start to feel burn-out coming, and during those times I take a timeout. When those times hit this semester, I tried to spend extra time with my girlfriend. I also developed an interest in boxing, and spent some downtime this semester watching boxing documentaries and old Mike Tyson fights on YouTube.

But the thing that nourished my soul the most this semester, the thing that filled me with happiness, with life, was working hard at my internship. Growing in my abilities there, knowing that I genuinely helped some of these kids, is what kept my depression at bay. Going forward, I know that if I don’t find a job that fulfills me, then I will be in trouble.

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How am I contributing to social change in my field agency experience?

Before reading Paul Kivel’s (2000) article I might have been tempted to provide a cop-out answer to this question. I might have said that I’m helping individual students at my field placement to become better people—more aware, more self-controlled, etc.—and in so doing I’m helping to make society a better place. But Kivel flatly rejects this type of reasoning.

Kivel avers that most individuals who provide social services are not working for social change (p. 1) and have actually been co-opted by the ruling class to perpetuate systems which prevent meaningful societal change from occurring (p. 6). For instance, a social worker at a battered women’s shelter might be genuinely helping the women who come into the shelter, but most such workers are not undertaking “systematic, large-scale efforts to mobilize battered women and end male violence” (p. 7). In other words, such workers are pruning the thorny bush of social injustice but not hacking away at its roots.

When I apply this framework to my own work at the middle school, I can see that I have spent my time helping individuals but not working for social change. For instance, much of my time has been spent encouraging students to show respect to teachers and administrators. Now I don’t think it’s bad to teach students to respect these figures, but I think I’ve hurt these students run by ending my lesson there. I think I have inadvertently done the bidding of the ruling class, encouraging these students to be reverent, compliant sheep that can be counted on to perpetuate the status quo. What I also need to teach the students is discernment.

Some people, I must tell the students, deserve their respect, and some people do not. The math teacher who is trying to teach students master algebra deserves their respect, because that teacher is doing them a service, equipping them to succeed in this world. But the world also contains people who do not care about them, people who will judge them for being Latino or being female or being from the wrong neighborhood. These people do not deserve their deference but instead must be opposed.

In order to work for social change in the middle school, I would also do well to reinforce some of the lessons the students are learning in the classroom. Eighth-graders, for instance, are currently reading A Mighty Long Way, which is the memoir of a member of the Little Rock Nine. After reading the Kivel article, I began reading this memoir, and my plan is to start reinforcing the book’s message in my conversations with students and discussing with them how the civil rights struggle is far from over.

By taking these two actions—teaching students to be discerning about whom they respect and talking to them about the socially relevant books they’re reading in class—I think I can start to move beyond merely providing social services and begin by spearheading social change.

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What has helped you to stay calm and relaxed in the past (for example exercise, yoga, meditation, connecting with friends, supervision, a spiritual practice)?

I don’t know if I agree with the premise of this question, as it presupposes that one is practicing proper self-care when one is calm and relaxed, and yet I feel that I’m practicing my best self-care when I’m happy, alive, bubbling over with excitement. When I’m calm and relaxed, I’m often depressed. So for the remainder of this assignment, I’m going to substitute “happy” for “calm and relaxed.” Because I think happiness is a better indicator of proper self-care than being calm and relaxed.

I’ve been reading about positive psychology lately, and these authors say something that I’ve found to be absolutely true in my own life and that is that we’re happiest when we’re doing the things we’re best at. So many positive psychologists encourage clients to find their strengths and then look for ways to exercises those strengths in work and play. I recently took the VIA Survey of Character Strengths at https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/, and I found that my top two strengths are: (1) “Creativity, ingenuity, and originality—Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible,” and (2) “Love of learning—You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums—anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.” When I think back to the activities that have helped me stay happy, they tend to be activities that reflect these strengths: for example, writing, doing research, reading challenging works of literature.