A Social Worker’s Quandary

Being a social worker within the system that currently exists often feels like an oxymoron. While reading for one of my classes, I was presented with the moral question of how it is possible to do good work at a time when there is so much bad. Every system we exist in is built on oppression, prejudice and the intentional and systemic failure of minority groups. It is impossible for me, and many of the people that I am surrounded with, to feel that we can practice good social work in this system.

Essentially, what I am learning from listening and watching and is that the system that exists today must be dismantled in order to practice good and ethical social work. But this leaves us in a quandary. Because if we wait for the system to be dismantled, then it will never happen. Change is not a natural trajectory particularly when it requires upheaval and reevaluating the status quo. Therefore, this leaves working within the system to dismantle it. But then to an extent, participating in a system, even if it is to dismantle it, means that you are being complicit in that system.

This is the problem. The quandary, if you will. Because it can feel morally reprehensible to work within a system that you know is corrupt, even with the goal of dismantling it. Even a good apple in a barrel of bad ones still exists within a barrel of rotten apples. Not every institution is as reprehensible as the other (ACAB). But it is still true that the institutions that we rely on for social welfare are largely failing.

We are failing so many people: racial and ethnic minorities; women; and people in the carceral system. We are failing those who are unhoused; failing people who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community; who have faced mental health diagnoses; domestic or sexual violence. To name but a few. The system is struggling under the weight of those who it is committed to, yet the failures are so acute that it makes one curious what the system is doing at all.

When you look at social work through the lens of all that it is meant to do, but all that it is not doing, it is not difficult to resolve that the issue is perhaps not what we are learning in school, or with the individual, but with the system. It is also disappointing that it is possible to find social workers whose passivity in the face deconstructing racism, bias, prejudice and other systemic and systematic failures in the face of a lack of personal interest leads to the same place: lack of change, complicity.

Being complicit in the system rather than actively working to dismantle it is alarming and is also a direct contradiction to social work values. Values such as protecting the dignity of life, honouring a persons agency and self-determination, respecting difference. I guess the question I am asking myself and the issue I am identifying is that to dismantle a system as a social worker, I am required to work within the system. However, working within a system even with the intent of dismantling it, means that to some extent you are being complicit in the system.

Recognizing the system and seeking to work within it as a clinician and an advocate requires some level of cognitive dissonance and/or the ability justify working within a system that has caused harm. This is a complex issue and requires a lot of critical thinking.

Nothing is beyond redemption. And my argument is not that we should just all give up and go home now, frustrated by our broken system. Instead, my argument is that when grappling with the quandary of what it means to be a social worker, it is imperative to recognize that the system that we are expected to work in, needs to be dismantled and rebuilt. That the work that needs doing is boundless, but that doesn’t mean that it cannot be done.

This work requires passion, it requires both patience and impatience, and it requires the ability to challenge yourself to think differently. To break down your own norms and to read and learn. Social work is a living, breathing practice. It evolves and forms based on the rapid shifts that we experience in our world.

This presents us with the opportunity to use our privilege and our passion to do the work. The hard, painstaking work. Dismantling systems is hard. It requires cultural humility and the desire to learn how to do be different. How to be better — better social workers, practice ethically, responsibly, and with the cultural and social humility that is necessary for good social work.

I began this post writing with frustration, riled up by the complex quandary that I am facing. I discussed what it feels like going into a profession where I will be knowingly complicit in a system that needs to be dismantled. And I’m just as riled up now. But that is what advocacy is. That is what using my voice and my privilege is. It is still a quandary. But slightly less so. This is work worth doing. And work worth doing does not have to be easy. It just has to be done. So here is to committing to the work. Committing to change and dismantling so that the work that is done reflects values that we believe in.

— Liora

How to balance living and survival

Today I had a conversation with a close friend about why it is impossible to do all the things. During this conversation I said that it is ok to admit that you want more in life than to just survive. These words struck me hard because that is the point — balancing living and surviving in a way that gives you the best opportunity to thrive.

Survival mode can often be an undeniable gift. It is the drive to keep going, to fight for yourself even when it might seem illogical to do so. It is the voice in the back of your head that reminds you why you keep going. And for that, it is a true gift. Not everyone has a survival instinct. Not everyone has the capacity or the ability to keep going against all odds. Some things are just too big, too exhausting.

Yet, we also know that survival is supposed to be an instinct, a mode that we shift into under specific circumstances — not a long-term solution. Survival mode can be sneaky like that. It is a protector against things that we cannot control. But in doing so, it can sometimes protect us against the good as well.

Research on various types of medical burn out, such as adrenal fatigue, fibromyalgia, and other conditions point to the root cause as being prolonged stress. Burnout can be caused by the over-production of adrenaline, or other hormones that are in overdrive when a person is in chronic survival mode.

As is usually the case, I found myself reflecting on all of this. I realized that I am in a weird space careening between survival and living/thriving. I say this because a lot of what I do, of what we all do, is rooted in survival. We work multiple jobs, or one job that we don’t necessarily like, to earn money to pay rent and buy groceries. We push ourselves beyond the boundaries of what is considered comfortable to be able to do the things – all of which are ultimately a means to an end.

In the meantime, however, we do not have the luxury of time to invest this same kind of energy into the things we truly love or the things that give us energy rather than drain it. Things or people that give as well as take.

I have found that mentally, I am not in survival mode anymore. And for this, I am very grateful. However, this also means that the goals that I have for myself have evolved and changed for the better too. But with this evolution comes the realization that these goals are not currently attainable with the time and resources I have access to.

Sometimes these goals are really simple. Like being consistent in self care that goes beyond survival. These things are filed in my notes app under ‘bucket list’. These activities have yet to make it out of the notes app, and they aren’t really bucket list worthy, but they are a list of things I want to do that I don’t have the time for or means to, and so they live in this space between a regular to-do list and all my hopes and dreams (separate note, same app though).

When I talk to my friends, I find that most of us are taken up with very real responsibilities that have to be completed. These commitments, the commitments of adulthood can leave very little room for the rest of it. It being the things that we do that give life meaning, pizzaz, sparkle, whatever you want to call it. The things that make all the other things worth doing.

In every stage of life, people will tell you why it is the best time in your life, as well as why it is the worst. Your mid-twenties can be spent watching your friends and peers mostly through the distorted lens of social media and wondering why they have all this time and money to do the things you don’t even have time to imagine doing. At least in my experience, I have found this to be true.

And the answer? Apart from acknowledging that social media isn’t real life, blah blah blah. The answer is that there has to be a balance. A balance between living and surviving. Surviving is doing all the things you need to do to so that you can wake up in the morning with a roof over your head and food to eat and the ability to get to work and be a functional human (whatever that means to you). Living is the things we do after that. And some days, we just don’t get there. Survival takes up so much time and energy that we don’t get to do the living.

It can be disheartening, depressing and existentially exhausting to be in chronic survival mode. Once the pure adrenaline runs out, you’re left chasing your tail in the rat race of life wondering when you signed up for this life-long marathon with seemingly no breaks.

Figuring out how to balance it all, how to live as well as just survive, is the hardest part of it all. It is when you have to start thinking long-term, not just about the immediate future and how to get there. In truth, I haven’t figured out how to balance these things yet. Because the demand for doing the things that are rooted in survival more often than not have to take precedence over the things that constitute just living.

And sometimes that it just the deal you make. But sometimes you have to find the moments of living within the chaos of survival. The sunrises and sunsets. Screaming the words of your favorite songs with your friends. Tipsy nights out and cozy days in. The hum of the city. All the things that remind you that you are beyond survival and have reached living. It doesn’t always have to be bucket list items. In fact, it mostly won’t be. And that is ok too.

I don’t think that I have made the point I wanted to make. But that in itself is the point too. To live is to thank the parts of us that fought for survival and then to remind those pieces that it is ok to let go now. Living can mean whatever the heck you want it to. And there is so much beauty to that.

— Liora

Half a Social Worker Right Now

Last week I finished my first year of Social Work school. I joked to my friends that I am now half a social worker. In truth, something that I have learned this year is that I am already a social worker before I have my qualifications, but require the degree to develop knowledge and skill that is necessary to be a good social worker in the field.

I have learned a lot this year. I have also unlearned a lot this year, which is something that we don’t talk about enough. The process of unlearning is taking information that you thought you knew and reassessing based on the awareness you have developed. Unlearning is part of being a Social Worker. This much I know.

Part of being a growing person is being able to admit all the things we do not know, as well as all the things we had readily assumed. Every person has biases, it is what you do with them that matters. Crucially, unlearning biases and being conscious and committed to changing your own cultural assumptions is the cornerstone of being a social worker.

There are many other things I have learned this year as well. I have learned how bad a fit law school was for me. I have learned what it looks like to have more of a balance. Feeling inspired again has allowed me to grow and push myself to do things that I might not have done a year ago.

Mostly, I have learned how important and worthwhile this profession is, and how grateful I am to be pursuing it. Social work school was sort of in my peripheral vision, but once I found a love for Political Science and humanities subjects, pursuing advocacy and legislation felt like the natural route. I love learning and that hasn’t changed. But what I learned this year is how much I value working with people, around people, to help people.

I had many preconceptions about becoming a Social Worker before this year. And I grappled with many of those things at the beginning of the year. Mostly, I worried that pursuing Social Work was taking the ‘easy way out’. Now I am embarrassed that I believed that, because Social Work is by no means the easy way out.

As a society, we put corporate professions on a pedestal. When I was in law school I remembered noting the superiority that a lot of my classmates boasted. For the most part, I felt like an imposter, but I did still feel a lot of pride over the accomplishment of being qualified enough to be in law school.

That is not to say that it is not an achievement, because it is. But the bruise to my ego of switching out was noticeable to me. And it made me uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable because I wanted to believe that I did not have an ego, and it made me uncomfortable because I was embarrassed to have been demoted to the ranks of ‘not good enough’. My own perception of social work was skewed by the messages I received and my own internalization that social work was not good enough for me.

Yet, here I am, half a social worker later realizing that the ego I had and the shame I felt about pursuing Social Work was imposed by the messages I received and by my own faulty thinking. Instead I am proud that this is the path I have chosen. I love being a Social Worker and being able to help, guide, understand and practice empathy with every waking breathe. I chose this path and it chose me back and for that I am extremely grateful.

Social work is hard. You often meet people at the intersection of the worst moment of their lives. It is rewarding and it is also exhausting. Social work is fulfilling and can also be devastating. All of these things can be and are true. All of this to say that just because I am feeling the joy, doesn’t mean that it is by any means easy or not challenging. It is just that I am pursuing a path that fits. The joy in that is indescribable.

From my field work placement this year I learned about life, love, and loss. I learned about being brave and bold. And about the many, many different paths that life can take. I have met people who worked on the frontlines of medical innovation, government employees, teachers, businesspeople, lawyers, artists, dancers, performers, activists, doctors, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. I have met people who have devoted their lives to causes spanning an entire spectrum such as: political parties, environmental justice, judicial reform, religious practice. And along the way, I have had conversations that will stick with me for a long time.

One thing that is abundantly clear to me after this year is something that I knew but never fully internalized: Each person truly is a universe, no matter how cliche it is to say. We may walk in the same forrest, and even leave the same sized footprints, but we are never truly able to understand the experiences of each other, the universes’ that we occupy, or the spaces we live in. And I think that is ok and beautiful.

Right now, I am half a social worker. I have one year left and a lifetime to go. I feel excited, grateful, and privileged to be here.

— Liora

Hustling for Worthiness

I recently came across the term ‘hustling for worthiness’ for the first time in a book I was reading. This refers to the idea that people who crave validation, who crave being made to feel worthy, will constantly and unrelentingly seek out worthiness from other people and through external things. When I did some further research, I noticed that the term ‘Hustling for Worthiness’ was coined by Brene Brown.

I think that part of the idea of hustling for worthiness is the incessant need to seek out validation from other people, regardless of whether they are the right people, which ends up being to your detriment. Self-doubt and a lack of self esteem are at the core of this feeling. If you do not trust yourself or have a strong foundation of self-worth, then you will be constantly seeking out approval and worth from others. As such, hustling for worthiness is not just a symptom of a problem, it is both a symptom and a cause. If your self-worth is derived entirely from what other people tell you, you will always be looking for other people to tell you how to feel about yourself.

When hustling for worthiness you are inherently placing limits on your self-worth, because you are focused on seeking it out in other places. And even people with the best intentions cannot replace the quality of worth that you should give to yourself.

It is of course more nuanced than that. But not entirely. I notice now, that when I talk to my friends, or to anyone, I can see the parts of myself that needed the constant reassurance from others in order to be ok in myself. That is exhausting. Having now grown enough and fortified my own self-worth and beliefs, I can recognize how much time and energy hustling for worthiness took up. And how much better off I am when I stopped needing validation from others to love myself. Don’t get me wrong, we all need people. Human beings are fundamentally social creatures. This means that we do look to one another for things like validation. There is however, a key difference between knowing your worth and feeling validated at times, and your entire worth being dependent on the validation of others.

I also believe that rooted in a person’s self-worth is their resilience. I have always loved the metaphor that people are like houses. That without a strong foundation we will crumble. But what constitutes a strong foundation? I think it is lots of things. There are many different things that make up a strong foundation. Life is full of things that don’t go to plan. Some of those things are just happy accidents, and some of those things are tragic. And there is a whole spectrum in between.

But when those things happen, when there are bumps in the road or big disasters or when something doesn’t go your way, your reaction to these things is what indicates growth and a strong foundation. And what I mean by that is when hard things happen, it is healthy to give ourselves space to feel the pain. Not acknowledging the hard thing and the pain under the guise of strength is not strength. Because eventually all that pain will surface even when you don’t want it to. There is a difference between creating space for and feeling the pain, however, and being destroyed by it. When you don’t have a strong foundation any kind of pain, superficial or otherwise, is enough to create complete destruction.

And when that happens, it is significantly harder to get back up again. I am a firm believer that you can always get back up. But a broken foundation that is already cracked is inevitably going to be harder to build from. The reason why I believe that hustling for worthiness is part of this issue, is because a lot of the time, the two are linked. With a weak foundation, you are constantly looking for things to fill it. Self worth is a crucial part of a strong foundation. When you are constantly hustling for worthiness, you are not always picky about who you are getting your worth from. And when that validation goes away, you are left once more with a cracked foundation.

So what is the answer? The answer is growth, patience and internal work. I wish there was a quick fix. It would be much easier that way, less arduous and painstaking. Unfortunately though, it is rare that the best things come easy. And part of the growth is learning to be ok with that. Notice your patterns. If you find yourself constantly reaching for the validations of others, rather than focusing on what you think of yourself. This is something I have thought about recently. When no one else is looking, do you like who you are? (May provoke an existential crisis FYI). But it is an important question to ask yourself. Who are you when no one else is around? And is that a person who you like?

The answer will vary. Self-worth is not stagnant. But the more you grow with it, the bigger it grows and the stronger your foundation is. Confronting our own patterns and need of others is uncomfortable. But it is necessary to confront so that you can move through. Work through. I encourage you to think about if you find yourself hustling for worthiness. If you are over-thinking and exhausting yourself and others with constant neediness. And also not to chastise yourself for it. But to notice it and start to find ways to challenge yourself.

It is often difficult to believe how much capacity we have for change. A habit, a behavior, a thought pattern may seem permanent, a life-sentence, a part of your inner self. But very few people do not possess the capacity to change. That is the complete beauty in being alive. And being able to choose. All the time you have dedicated to hustling for worthiness, all that energy spent can be turned inwards.

— Liora

Lost and Found

I’ve been thinking a lot about how often, in order to find yourself, you first have to lose a lot of things. Namely, what comes to mind for me is losing the restraints of other people’s opinions and perceptions of who you are. I suppose this seems pretty obvious when you think about it. In reality, however, to let go of other people’s opinions and perceptions is extremely difficult. Even from the youngest age, we receive covert and overt messaging about who we are, or who we should be.

This kind of messaging makes it much harder to figure out who we are as independent people, when we have spent our whole lives relying on other people to tell us what we should be seeing. I think a lot about the fact that even on a basic level, being able to see yourself fully relies on the use of a mirror. If nothing else, you cannot fully see yourself without a mirror there, to reflect back your image at you.

For the most part, I don’t think we even realize how much we rely on other people to tell us and show us who we are. And that is where the problem lies. Because if you believe yourself to be comprised entirely of what other people think of you, or other people’s impressions or expectations, then you will never really be able to figure out who you are. At least not in a way that allows you to find yourself fully.

This kind of realization can be a bitter pill to swallow. Particularly when you realize that it requires a lot more work and independent thought that you realized. I don’t think anyone likes to think of themselves as a sheep. In general, even if deep down you know that you are a trend follower, rather than setter, that doesn’t mean you blindly follow others. Yet, when you put into context the way we form our fundamental truths about who we are, it sounds remarkably sheep-like.

That’s not to say that you are mindless if the truths you hold about yourself are shaped by others. It’s just that, now that I think about it, it’s not not true either. In a way then, you do have to be lost in order to be found. And once you are lost, don’t wait for other people to find you. Find yourself.

Finding yourself and being your own person is not easy, but it is rewarding. So how do we do it? How do we find ourselves if everyone has a perception of who we are, which informs who we believe ourselves to be?

In Grey’s Anatomy, Meredith Grey and Christina Yang have an infamous friendship. One part of this friendship is that they are each other’s ‘person’. Meaning that they count on each other, rely on each other and are always here for each other. This is depicted and explored in the show. One thing I have recently learned is that before we can be other people’s ‘person’, we have to be that for ourselves.

I am learning the importance of being my own person. That means that I rely on myself, am there for myself and look after myself first. Something I have learned is that the reason why I have not been my own person in the past is because I have not always believed myself to be enough.

If you don’t think that you are enough as a person, then you don’t value yourself as an independent person. This often leads to not relying on yourself. So, I learned how to value myself. I learned that I am enough, as I am. That’s not to say that I’m not still working hard. Growth is eternal. But at the point at which I finally realized that not loving myself was creating such a disservice, I began to view things very differently.

Learning to be my own person, to rely on myself, to be enough for myself does not mean that I do not need others. It just means that I can live without feeling like I need others to survive. My self-worth, and self-image are not dependent on other people. That is exhilarating. It is empowering and thrilling. It makes me realize how important it is to be able to see yourself without using anyone else’s lens.

Adjusting to this shift perspective is hard. The process itself is exhausting and can be frustrating. Particularly in the beginning when you are still trying to figure out what any of it really means. But if you keep going, invest in yourself, it will be worth it. Being lost can make you feel like you are free floating, unattached and all alone. But being lost is the only way to find yourself, and believe me, it is worth it.

Challenge yourself to see yourself clearly. Lose the tinted glasses that you have developed by borrowing the lens’ of other people. Be brave. You deserve to be able to see yourself clearly. You deserve to love yourself and find yourself.

— Liora