Many people who have been homeless have lived through neglect, isolation, and multiple traumas. Because of these experiences, many are distrustful when they begin to engage in services. Are we as service providers prepared to bridge the chasm between our position of security and their position of multiple losses and wounds?
Self-care…I heard a lot about how I should practice self-care while getting my degree in social work, but not much about what it should look like and how to do it. Coming to social work from bodywork (I am a licensed massage therapist), I was very aware of the critical importance of self-care and how to incorporate it into my schedule.
Based on prior experience and conversations with colleagues, here are my top 5 tips for self-care:- Plan and schedule it!
We plan for everything: meetings at work, dinners with friends, doctor appointments…you name it, and it probably has a space on your calendar. Your self-care practice should not be any different. My social work friends and I try for “Self-Care Sunday” every other week. We all have different work experiences, but our daily routine can start to wear us down. These self-care get-togethers give us something to look forward to during stressful times and help reboot our thinking so we stay positive and mentally healthy.
If something is to stay in the memory, it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory. —Friederich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Loneliness is violence in slow motion. —Robert Glück, Jack the Modernist
A few months ago I met an ex of mine at his apartment. As dinner led to kissing because sometimes dinner does that, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, I want you to know I’ve tested positive. I said, Ok, because I wasn’t sure what else to say. Later he texted me about how he had felt shame and fear, and I asked if I had ever made him feel that way. He said, No, but then he didn’t text me again which of course meant Yes.
I recently developed a training for future homeless shelter staff with members of Y2Y Harvard Square's Young Adult Advisory Council. After discussing past mistakes service providers have made in interacting with them, we put their words of wisdom and advice on paper. Our goal was to catalyze productive conversations between service providers and users.
