It’s a thin line between love and hate.

Actually, that’s a line from one of my favorite songs, done by The Pretenders. The song is actually about domestic violence, but truthfully, it applies here too. Sometimes working in state child welfare feels like a domestic violence relationship…the abuse line workers take from both administration and from the general public.

Speaking for myself, I went into social work with the intent of making real change.  I think I do, but working within a bureaucracy, I feel like the bureaucratic agency forgets what “social work” means.  Doing the right thing isn’t always possible because it might cost something.  (Did you know that like teachers, many social workers–including those working in state or county child welfare–pay for things out of their own pockets, because the budget won’t allow it?  Really.  I promise we aren’t demons, despite what the media says.)

Just for my own sanity, I look at various definitions of social work, just for my amusement.  (All right, all right, a form of self flagellation, then. That’s flagellation, not flatulation. )

What is Social Work?

Social work is a profession concerned with helping individuals, families, groups and communities to enhance their individual and collective well-being. It aims to help people develop their skills and their ability to use their own resources and those of the community to resolve problems. Social work is concerned with individual and personal problems but also with broader social issues such as poverty, unemployment and domestic violence.

Human rights and social justice are the philosophical underpinnings of social work practice. The uniqueness of social work practice is in the blend of some particular values, knowledge and skills, including the use of relationship as the basis of all interventions and respect for the client’s choice and involvement.

In a socio-political-economic context which increasingly generates insecurity and social tensions, social workers play an important and essential role.

Courtesy: The Canadian Association of Social Workers

What is the Role of the Social Worker?

The work undertaken by social workers can vary widely between countries as the aims and values of social workers must reflect the cultural and social norms of the society in which they operate, in order to cater appropriately for the needs of the people they serve. The main tasks of social workers are casework (linking clients with agencies and programs that will meet their psychosocial needs), counselling (psychotherapy), human services management, social welfare policy analysis, community organizing, advocacy, teaching (in schools of social work), and social science research.

Courtesy: Wikipedia

Really?  Is that what I am supposed to be doing?  It feels a it more like this:

There is no joy in it any longer. I hate it. After a day of dealing with clients’ pain, I’m exhausted and just don’t want to be with people anymore. Clients expect me to be there twenty-four hours a day and get upset if they get a recorded message instead. And the managed care system is making it worse. I no longer have control over the type and quality of care I provide–some reviewer in some company who doesn’t know the client and who has less training than I do decides how many sessions I can have. All that matters is keeping costs down, not what’s good for the client, and it’s really hard to live with that. Sometimes I lie so I can get more care, but it’s hard to live with that too. And even though I am working more hours than ever, I am getting paid less. This is a life?”

–Maslach & Leiter, p. 11, The Truth About Burnout : How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to Do About It (1997, Jossey-Bass Publishers)

Hmm. Yes, that is more the reality of it. It is amazing to me to see how managers and politicians with no experience in the field, who act only in response to politics or budgets, expect us to do more with so much less. And the children and families suffer…because non-profit resources are growing less and less, and the investment of budgets is not in the people or the community served, and not even the workers, but in the self-perpetuation of bureaucracy and corporations. In other words, we have less money to help the vulnerable populations, too.

BTW, I wanted to do my thesis in organizational psychology on the psychological health of a given organization. Obviously, that didn’t happen. But wouldn’t have that been a fun thesis to read?

wishing it was…

As a general rule, I don’t feel bad about my transgender, transgressive transracial self. I am quite fine with who and what I am. Usually, that is.

Yesterday was an exception.

It started with the loveliest of exams: the mammogram. I used to be a health advocate, so I had a reasonable idea as to where to go, and how to approach it. When I made the appointment, I requested that I go by my middle name, and to please use male pronouns.

Well. That didn’t happen. The receptionist seemed a little confused, and the technician especially so. When she called me back, she used my first—feminine—name, and she looked me up and down as I came back there. I looked her straight in the eye, and said: “Don’t argue. It’s me.” And I pointed to the name on the chart, which had my middle name, and a small note “please use this name.”

I went back with her, and explained, very patiently, that I was one of those nice XX guys, and please be respectful, as there were quite a few of us who were afraid to get mammograms and this sort of nonsense made it no easier. To her credit, she was very apologetic—and not smirky about it, just truly abashed and ashamed that she had made me feel badly—and said that she did indeed know better. She found out that we knew some of the same people, especially the queer health outreach workers, and the exam itself went okay.

Aim was left in the waiting room. As I went in, there was a Spanish speaking interpreter (working with Swedish), and her client. According to Aim, the interpreter went off about “those people” and about how “Latinos don’t do that sort of thing.” Well. What the fuck? Dismissed in race, gender and sexual orientation. Yes, I know, I know…it is the divide and conquer mentality (and I know as many queers who think all Latinos are homophobic OR here illegally) but some days I get fucking tired of teaching, and just want to “be.” But, the fact it was an employee of Swedish that did it really pisses me off. I can understand the interpreter not responding or correcting the client, but she was the one that instigated the nonsense. After Aim told me, part of me wanted to go back and say: “Look. You aren’t the only Spanish speaker in the world, and there are a lot of queer and trans Latinos. Just because you THINK you don’t know any, means nothing. What I do know, and you should, too, is you need to keep your mouth shut with your assumptions…especially in your professional capacity. You’re lucky your behavior doesn’t make me file a complaint with the city of Seattle.”

After that, I felt just a little shaky about my self-assurance. I was made to show ID once more that day, and got the once over. Generally, I could care less. This time, it pissed me off.

So. I made a couple of vows to myself: 1. I will change my first name OR make it a middle name, and 2. I will NOT have another mammogram. I will have surgery before that comes due again.

Number one is easy. Two is harder, because I refuse to go into debt for it. We’ll see. There’s a part of me that is furious that I have to resort to that for my safety and emotional well being.

Empathy, appearance and hope…

Well. I turned in my last paper in time for the end of the semester…it was on the psychology of mortality.

It’s been a topic on my mind for a while, because it it crops up in the most non-stereotypical areas. For example, I have found that the bearded, tattooed biker type generally has the kindest heart, and more than a few have been foster parents (officially and unofficially). Then, Mr. Clean Cut Business Man couldn’t care less about the kids on the street: he just wants them out of sight.

So what is empathy, and where does it lie within morality?

In psychology, the terms “helping behaviour”, “prosocial behavior” and “altruism” are frequently used interchangeably.

Helping is the broadest term, including all forms of interpersonal support such as the customer service of a salesperson. Prosocial behavior is narrower, in that it covers all actions intended to benefit one or more people other than oneself (excluding all paid activities in the service sector).

When a certain act is beneficial to another and is also intended, we call it prosocial. Yet, prosocial behaviour can be either altruistically or egoistically motivated. It can be motivated by internal or external rewards, by the wish to reduce aversive arousal, or by the ultimate goal to try to increase the other’s welfare.

In this last case, according to most psychologists, the helping is altruistically motivated. Thus, altruism is even narrower than prosocial behaviour, in that it implies the primary and ultimate motive to increase another person’s welfare.

Altruism as a psychological concept is quite different from altruism as a biological concept. Evolutionary biology does not take motives into account, and defines altruism entirely in terms of survival and reproduction. A behavior is altruistic when it increases the fitness of others and decreases the fitness of the actor. A shift from biology, where altruism is deduced from behavior, to psychology, where altruism is viewed in terms of motives, implies a shift from the behavioral products of evolution to the proximate mechanisms which direct these behaviors. These mechanisms are to be found in the human mind. In general, models on helping and altruism assume either an egoistic or an altruistic motivation behind helping.

In egoistically motivated helping behavior, the helper aspires to fulfill the ultimate goal of increasing his own welfare. In other words, egoistically motivated helping uses the instrumental goal of relieving the other’s suffering to reach the ultimate goal of receiving self-benefits.

An example is prosocial behavior motivated by the desire to reduce uncomfortable negative emotions and thus improve one’s own emotional state. This is known as the negative state relief model. It does not matter whether these negative emotions are already present or whether they are aroused by the encounter with an emergency situation. Either way, one engages in prosocial behavior to make oneself feel better. Thus, theories based on egoism maintain that the only ultimate goals an individual has are self directed.

Theories based on altruism do not make such a universal claim. Research in this tradition claims that some people, at least some times, have the welfare of others as ends in themselves. Empathy is an emotional state which is thought to evoke altruistic motivation.

Research on empathy has a long tradition in philosophy and since the beginning of the twentieth century also in psychology. Empathy is either as the subject’s awareness in imagination of the emotions of another person as well as a kind of social-cognitive bonding. Within a clinical context, empathy was initially viewed as a cognitive process referring to accurately and dispassionately understanding the client’s point of view concerning his or her situation. Later, empathy became understood as an emotional response referring to either feeling a vicarious emotion, feeling the same emotion as another person feels or feeling a vicarious emotion that is congruent with but not necessarily identical to the emotion of another. The major explanation of prosocial behavior in terms of empathy leading to an altruistic motive is the empathy-altruism hypothesis.

According to this hypothesis, at least some prosocial behavior is motivated entirely by the unselfish desire to help someone who needs help. This motivation can be even at the expense of oneself or of the group as a whole. The experience of empathy provides information that the helper values the welfare of another person and therefore must want to provide help. Empathy can be elicited by taking the perspective of the person in need.

Thus, contemporary psychology defines two main and interconnected mechanisms for altruistic behavior; a cognitive mechanism: taking the other’s perspective, and an emotional mechanism: feeling empathy or sympathy.

Yeah. Well. Where was I going with all this? Truthfully, I am not certain, except that we live in a society which is extremely individualistic, and “me” centered, that it seems to have any empathy or conscience at all is a drawback to “success.” I think I’d rather not be a success.

I did mention this on a local blog, on a thread about homelessness, and the response from one well-known conservative was “You talking about morality is a like a blind person talking about color.” Well, obviously, he doesn’t know much about blind people…but that is not the point. What I wanted to know was why he said that. (I think I know, but wanted him to say it…yes, I am queer, trans, mixed race…ad infinitum.)

I never did get an answer, and it caused much drama, and of course, he was the “victim” because he merely expressed an “opinion.”

And yes, I actually do feel guilty, although I had no part in his comment being removed by the moderators. (Sometimes empathy cuts both ways.)