dadpad wrote:A massage might be good deb book yourself in.
Do you have a support network you can unburden to?... besides us I mean.... were good I know ... but hardly real.
Mumpad lays it all on me when she gets home Nothing as distressing as your clients I guess but still it helps to unload stuff. I just listen suck it all up and dump it in a paddock somewhere on the way to work the next day. (shrug).
Really only to people in the same field.
That's why I miss the close team I had before so much.
If you start talking to people who are not used to the daily content, you just make them very distressed and shocked, or you actually traumatise and repel them......so with most of my friends I don't talk about it, except to say a bit re good day or bad day, or interesting tidbits re general stuff that does not breach confidentiality.
Even partners have usually not coped, and I have to be careful re them, as well. I think most folk working with the level of trauma I do (and police and medical folk as well are often the same, I think) do not share a lot with people outside the field.
The theoretical bases I am working from take forever and ever to explain, as well, and I teach so much about trauma and its effects on kids, and how to work with it, and with systems etc, so that they could understand what I am crapping on about, that I would bore the **** out of myself doing the same with non colleague friends, unless they are very interested.
I do write a bit about it here, from time to time, if I have the energy, for people who ask about particular issues, becaues (at least for me) it's endlessly fascinating and illuminating (the theories and research stuff I mean)...or I might write a bit for folk with anxiety problems (That's all gathered on some thread somewhere).
Believe me, I don't tell you lot bupkis! It's just nice to say oh ****, sometimes, here, without having to expend the energy I have to to unload in depth with some poor therapist friend.
As I said above, in my view, most of this type of stuff ought to happen naturally within one's team, and I think it a sad failing in my current one that it doesn't....and certainly not just for me.
I am kind of doing what I can to make it happen more (eg demonstrating fearlessness in presenting stuff where I feel really at a loss or made mistakes...since a lot of the lack of sharing seems to be about people feeling terrified to expose uncertainty for fear of being jumped on or thought badly of etc.) and I discuss concerns with management about people struggling with cases that are really destroying them.....but our management seems to be in a permanent state of crisis itself, and we are so many staff short, that I understand their problems in addressing more up the hierarchy from basic survival sorts of issues.
Mind you, I think a lot of that applies to most jobs.
If Jes needs to debrief re her day, I can get the level of frustration and busyness, but I can't really appreciate her day well, because I don't really understand what her job involves. She'd likely get much better relief from someone who can go "Oh yes, I KNOW!!! Those widgets flocculating in the ersatzerium get me every time too!"
Same with you, DP....I bet if you have a really complex work problem, it is far better aired with someone else who knows intimately what you are talking about.....I think most jobs have their arcane fellowships of sufferings and joys, that can really be shared only with others of similar ilk.
BTW, doesn't mumpad work with aboriginal communities? I can't imagine her job could be less traumatic than mine.
Good on you for listening in detail without flinching.
