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In making a commitment to
keep our morale positive, it is important not to tie personal feelings of
competence to client performance. Likewise, it is crucial that we not allow
others to do so either. How many times have we been criticized by another
professional for what a client has, or has not, done! Is the school yelling at
child care workers because students are late, or unprepared, or difficult? Is
the therapist yelling because the youth doesn’t want to go to their counseling
appointment, or arrives late, or leaves early? Does the AM shift ask the night
shift why kids are still in bed and not up getting ready for school, as if it
was the staff job to get kids up rather than to wake them up.
Why do we ask each other to account for client behavior? Why do we “get down” on ourselves because clients are struggling? What tempts us to measure our own or each others performance by how well a client is doing, at the same time that we spend meeting after meeting spelling out the trauma, neglect, and general maltreatment that our clients have endured that bring them to us in the first place? Professional objectivity does not imply that we have no feelings for our clients, that we don’t deeply care about them, and that we don’t emotionally invest in their well being. I think that the way professional objectivity is necessary for good morale when it allows us to distinguish clearly the gap between our efforts and the clients ability to benefit from them. We are not, after all, responsible for the hurtful experiences that bring our wonderful young ones to us. We are not the cause of their struggles and their pain. And, we may also not be enough for their cure! At least maybe not yet. To stay with our earlier sailing analogy — Don’t let the client’s wind get into your sails! It may be helpful to remind ourselves that people walked away from Jesus, Mohammed, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many other great and powerful teachers and healers, every day. Why should we wonder or become angry when some of those we reach out to turn away? Can the “result” we seek be reframed as the effort we make to reach, and to teach, and to care — even if the damage done to our young ones before we met them renders some of those we reach for unable to reach back? The result thus becomes something we can guarantee: that we will be faithful in our attempts. Maybe the important act is to give the gift, even if it remains unopened. |
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