TAG WORKER CARE

CARING AND DEBRIEFING TWO

The tall well dressed man walked down the street towards his car. He had had to park a long distance away from where he had made his last call. He pulled his stylish overcoat tighter as he grasped a beautiful silver box with one hand, he almost dropped it as he straightened his coat against the rising wind and rain. The lid on the box was ill fitting and kept rising up, with the wind , the rain, and carrying the thing he was struggling to keep the lid on. He walked bravely on thinking of his wife, his warm home, and his supper.The wind began to rise and the rain came down harder the box began to disintegrate and collapsed on the ground its contents spreading all around. The man fell on his knees with tears rolling down his cheeks he cried out, what a day I’ve had? He managed to get to his feet and plodded on to his car and his home. Where were the box contents?

A story of a professional carer coming home after a hard day, his persona one of the professional man able to deal with everyone’ s issues, but today had been overflowing with sad and unsolvable problems for which there was no easy answers. The problem was the client’s issues had really impinged on his own to the point of break down.

Each of us have an internal and external world, that which is inside is reflected in our outside world in terms of cultural norms and mores, life histories, including trauma, learned behaviours, and subsequent thoughts feelings and emotions. We face the outside world through personas which range from healthy to unhealthy to psychotic. These personas protect our connection with the outside world and are fronts for what we carry inside, the professional man is such a persona as is the pub joker always making people laugh but maybe all mixed up inside. I hope you are keeping pace with the notion it can feel to dangerous to engage in a real way so we act and loose a sense of who we really are. The professional man is a persona he faces the world as though he can fix everything but forgets his own humanity needs and overall vulnerability.

Each of us has a ‘client’ inside us, and if we remember this it can help to hold us back from

overwhelming ourselves with stressful behaviour ‘catch yourself on’ get a life!

Thanks to those of you who spoke to me about my last blog and to Linda who never fails to comment online. Lets not loose the hub of this dialogue in simple terms who supports the worker? Every organisation has a ‘duty to care’ for their workers but are often ill equipped or understaffed with appropriately trained personnel to undertake supportive

supervision. This raises many questions what do you think they are?

NOW THE CAT IS AMONG THE PIGEONS