The Babes and the Wolf

An Exercise in Functional Procrastination

Right now, as I type, I am procrastinating on the last part of my weekly writing assignment. You know you’ve raised the bar to ‘functional procrastinator’ when you manage to be perfectly productive at powering through a whole prioritized list of things that you were previously procrastinating on, in lieu of what you’re actually supposed to be getting done at the moment – because its just that much more daunting.

A few months (okay, several months) ago, I started working my way through a writing course in an attempt to re-establish my practice with a beginner’s mind. It was going great for a little while. That is, until I found myself up against the dreaded “Writing from Memory” chapter. Whenever I read the words “Write about a childhood memory…” my creative brain shuts down, jammed up with thoughts that I’d just as soon not remember because they threaten to upend my relative emotional stability. I picked up the course again this week and still the dreaded assignment awaits.

Sometimes you’ve got to bloody your knuckles a bit in order to fight your way free. And I’ll get to that (today, I swear). But in the meantime, this dilemma has raised a couple of thoughts.

I am currently a psychiatric case manager / counselor for an Assertive Community Treatment team. Basically, we work with people who have Axis I diagnoses (severe persistent mental illness) with high hospitalization rates and significant difficulty engaging in outpatient treatment. The ultimate goal and overarching conviction of the ACT treatment modality, and those of us who invest our professional hearts and energies to this work, is that everyone deserves to live a personally efficacious and emotionally fulfilled life. And that with a little (okay, sometimes a lot) of help our consumers can achieve this while living stably in the community (as opposed to languishing in a state hospital or prison, as is painfully often the case). Its pretty rigorous work and, as one might imagine, we have a very high turn over rate. Across the board, ACT teams tend to be constantly in the process of training new staff. Without the dedication and emotional fortitude necessary for this type of work, most new hires burnout in the first 6 months or so. I’m nearing my 1 year anniversary with the team and, barring a possible work-life conflict from my upcoming move; I intend to stay just where I am. I also recently submitted my grad school application for a fairly prestigious School of Social Work. The plan, as it stands, is to focus on trauma counseling and eventually become a trauma therapist.

So, as I sit here not-writing (what I should be), my mind begs the questions: If I can’t slog through a 250 word paragraph about my past because of emotional interference from my own traumas, how can I be an effective social worker in a field sodden with vicarious trauma? How can I remain a fully present and useful tool for my consumers during the inevitable period of turmoil and emotional re-constitution that addressing these types of issues inevitably entails if I’m weighted down with my own baggage? What structures / habits / therapeutic practices can I institute in order to keep myself relatively intact and emotionally functional through the coming changes? It is imperative both to my personal happiness and professional aspirations that I continue to ask these questions and meet them with quantifiable action.

Because, again: Growth is often necessarily painful and not a single one of our lives is without obstacles. Sometimes you’ve got to bloody your knuckles a bit in order to fight your way free.