by rachelthemuse | Feb 10, 2018 | Culture, Emotional Intelligence, Self-care
As someone in a caregiving profession, I know all about “self-care”. Other people in caregiving professions and high stress jobs are frequently reminded that we need to take care of ourselves in order to ensure our long lasting ability to continue to perform our work with ongoing engagement and consistent quality. In fact, we’re lectured about it constantly, as if some extra yoga and another pedicure will absorb some of the daily stressors we experience in our work and home lives. It’s true that if you don’t take time out from your normal obligations to do enriching and meaningful activities, your quality of life will suffer. However, the way our culture has become accustomed to pointing to “self-care” as the primary remedy to all of the stress that has built up in our lives is problematic.
One problem with this over-used prescription is that it is just another way of deferring responsibility to the individual to resolve all of the culture induced distress that has become overwhelming in the first place. For example, if your primary stressor is your job and/or working conditions, self-care can only go so far in remedying the problem. If the conditions that you work under do not change, the stress is going to remain. Certainly you can develop a set of coping skills, habits, and life-enhancing activities that will increase your quality of life outside of your job, but if you keep returning to the same stressful environment day after day, the amount of relief you will experience is limited. While some of us have choices in the kinds of jobs and career options we pursue, it’s not always practical, feasible or even desirable to just go out and find a new job when the stress levels become unmanageable.
Administrators, managers, and supervisors love to hand out the self-care prescription when employees complain about their workplace stressors. It’s easy to see why they do this. This absolves the company of any responsibility to manage the workplace environment in a way that promotes the wellbeing of their employees by offering on-site services to enrich employee health and happiness, ensuring employees have reasonable work expectations and sufficient resources to do their jobs well (including fair compensation), and prioritize employee mental and physical health in their overall business plans. By telling employees “make sure you’re practicing self-care”, the employee becomes responsible for managing whatever workplace expectations come their way, and if they can’t handle it, it’s their fault for not taking care of themselves.
Another problem with our approach to using self-care as a catch-all recommendation for worker health, is that we tell workers particularly in the caregiving professions that they need to practice self-care “so that you can care for others”. We also tell this to parents, reminding them that one of their duties is to care for themselves so that they can continue to care for others. The reason this is problematic is because we again are ignoring the needs of the individual in service to the sacrifices that individual is making for others, whether that be to their workplace, their family, or others. The assumption is that if you are burnt out and stressed beyond reason, that you cannot then attend properly to the needs of others. It’s not that the statement itself isn’t true, it’s that this is the wrong way to look at self-care. Taking care of yourself is something that you deserve independently of your value to your workplace or your family. You should take care of yourself because you deserve to reap the benefits of enjoying a good quality of life enriched with the things that relax and rejuvenate you. Will it make you a better caregiver, employee, parent, or colleague? Probably. But that’s not the point. Maybe you like to exercise, meditate, pamper yourself, engage in spiritual practices and reflections, spend time with the people you care about, or give back to your community in meaningful ways. These are things that you should do because they enrich your quality of life and connection to others, not because you owe it to the people you give other forms of care or service to. You should go about doing the things that help you to enjoy your life because it is your life and you deserve to enjoy it.
One thing that would be more helpful to most people would be if their employers starting looking at employee mental and physical health as something that they have a stake in too. Some employers have found creative ways to support their employees beyond providing a general recommendation that employees take care of themselves. These measures can go from ideas such as bringing in massage therapists or other service providers on site, allowing flexible or work from home schedules, up to profit sharing or co-op models that provide employees with more stake in their own companies. Such approaches to managing employee mental, physical, and financial health can go a long way towards increasing quality of life without increasing the pressure and burdens on employees to find their own solutions to workplace stressors. We can all support companies that engage in practices such as these, which reflect a business model that values the employees. We can also support each other by dropping the “so you can take care of others” part of our encouragement to care for ourselves. We all have a limited time in which to live our lives, and it can be a great joy and source of personal satisfaction and meaning when we care for others, whether that is our clients, our friends, or our families. Moreover, we deserve to care for ourselves, as well as to receive the care others have for us, because our lives are independently valuable. We are not only mothers, fathers, children, caregivers, or employees. We are individuals deserving of our best quality of life as we see fit, and the steps we take to care for ourselves can and should be done to enhance life for the pure joy of it, not merely to preserve our ability to care for others.
by rachelthemuse | Jan 27, 2018 | Abuse, Mental Health, Parenting, Self-care
Many people struggle with healing from an abusive childhood, and when the abuser was a parent, the healing process can be particularly complicated. Everyone has a unique story and the impact on individuals is affected by many different factors. The severity, frequency, and tactics of the abuse, and emotional strain on the victim all impact the degree to which people are able to cope with and recover from past trauma. One area of struggle can revolve around the concept of forgiving your abuser.
Forgiveness is often one our culture’s go-to prescriptions when it comes to dealing with painful incidents that continue to impact our current lives. These prescriptions may come in the form of religious instructions, moral obligations, and the promise of healing. While forgiveness may be an important and helpful step in the recovery process, it is important to understand who it is being done for and why. Otherwise forgiveness itself becomes confusing, complicated, or even meaningless.
At one time in my career I was working as a hospice social worker. Most of my patients were very elderly, and the majority of them had supportive and loving families who had the comfort and peace of the patient as their priority. However, occasionally I worked with families where there was significant emotional strain in the relationship between the dying parent and the adult son or daughter, sometimes due to past abuse by the parent. Needless to say the issues each family was dealing with were unique and there were long and fraught histories involved. I had some family members who spoke to me about their own process of forgiveness and how it helped them to heal and find their own peace, and I had other families who had no interest in a dramatic reconciliation at the deathbed. They were tired of being judged for keeping their distance from a formerly abusive parent, and their own healing was better served by strong boundaries and detachment. Our society loves a Hollywood ending, and popular culture is littered with depictions of those reconciliations.
When I am working with clients to process and heal from childhood abuse, we discuss forgiveness and what it means for their individual recovery process. Some of the things we have to figure out through that process include knowing who the forgiveness is for (the victim, the abuser, or someone else), how it will or will not facilitate their healing process, and why it is being given. The answers to those questions help people come to an honest conclusion about whether they want to forgive their abuser, whether it will help at all, and the intentions behind that forgiveness. I don’t ever tell people that they need to or have to forgive their abuser in order to heal and recover from an abusive childhood. If people feel forced to take the moral high ground by offering forgiveness to someone who may or may not even be in their life anymore, they may continue to struggle to recover because it feels insincere and obligatory. However, if that forgiveness is offered for the right reasons and at the right time, it can be an important step towards releasing the control trauma can have over their life and emotional wellness. The “right reasons and right time” are not for me to decide. Those decisions need to be made by the individual who is healing from that trauma.
As friends, families, communities, and caregivers, we can place value on forgiveness without making it into an obligation for people who have been abused. Coping with the emotional labor of processing the abuse inflicted by a parent who is supposed to love and care for you is difficult enough without having social pressure to rush the process and bring it to a convenient and neat conclusion. Allowing abuse survivors to direct their own recovery and determine why, when, how, and if forgiveness is a part of their healing journey is a more supportive and intentional way to promote recovery.
by rachelthemuse | Jan 21, 2018 | Abuse, Feminism, Motivation, Positivity, Self-care
This past Friday, Olympic Gold medalist Aly Raisman delivered a powerful victim impact statement at the sentencing portion of convicted sexual abuser Larry Nassar, former doctor to the USA Gymnastics team. Nassar pled guilty to 7 counts of sexually abusing minors, but he has been accused by over 150 athletes of manipulating his position as their doctor by sexually abusing them under the guise of providing medical treatment. The depth and scope of his abusive practices are horrific, but as with many of the abusers who have been exposed over the past year and half, he had a network of people behind him helping to cover up his abuses and discredit or silence his accusers. Raisman made clear in her statement that victims everywhere are fed up with being silenced and dismissed by saying “You do realize now the women you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time are now a force, and you are nothing.”
I have spent much of my career working with survivors of sexual abuse, both as a victim advocate and as a therapist. The criminal justice system has long been a source of frustration for me and my clients, both because of its re-victimization of survivors who do come forward, and the difficulty that victims have with receiving any kind of justice at all. Specifically, I find myself infuriated when cases are dismissed outright because “there is no evidence”. The message this sends to everyone is that a victim’s testimony is not evidence. It is only when dozens and dozens of women come forward with the same stories that their word can be trusted and used in a court of law. It takes a powerful army of survivors to put away 1 single abuser. This is the broken system that victims are forced to contend with if they want any measure of justice for the crimes against them. We don’t do this with other types of crimes.
Raisman spoke forcefully against her abuser in court, questioning the system that allowed his abuse to continue for years and calling him out directly for being a manipulative predator of the worst kind. It can be difficult for a survivor to see Raisman, who is a successful, high profile woman, speak out in court and think “I couldn’t do that, she has more security, money, and support than I do; I have too much to lose by speaking out”. Yet one of the first things Raisman acknowledged when she began to speak was that she was scared, and she didn’t want to come to deliver her victim impact statement. Even strong, powerful women can feel scared and small when facing the prospect of speaking out against an abuser. No one is protected from criticism when speaking out about their own abuse, because our culture has ingrained an atmosphere of victim blaming and doubt into our collective response to crimes of sexual abuse. I have personally borne witness to enough horror stories of how victims have been treated to know that we have a serious, serious problem. Policies have gotten better over the past 40 years or so, but in practice, much of the shame and blame continues.
Sexual abuse survivors need first and foremost to feel safe again, which means being believed and supported when they come forward. When their experiences are minimized and dismissed, or when they are blamed for the actions of their abusers, the healing process is damaged and it may take years or decades before they are able to seek help again. Healing after sexual trauma is possible, but we can all contribute to making this process more accessible to survivors by believing and supporting victims and taking their claims seriously. However, until the criminal justice system undergoes reforms that will enable more victims to confront their abusers in court, countless victims will go without justice and countless abusers will remain free to continue to perpetuate their crimes. The problem of sexual abuse, harassment, and exploitation continues daily. Anyone who cares about this issue must continue to speak out in support of survivors and demand changes in the systems that perpetuate the abuse if real change is to be made.
If you have been a victim of abuse, please know that while your circumstances may be unique to your particular experience, there is a lot of support available to survivors these days. It is important to know who, in your personal network of people, you may be able to trust and confide in for support. Yet even if you do not have a supportive group of family or friends around you, you can find support by reaching out for help from your community and from online resources. Finding an individual therapist or support group is one way to start the healing process. However, there are also many other online resources and forums where you can receive information and support if you are not ready to seek support in person or if you have difficulty finding resources in your area. If you have not been victimized, but know someone who has, you can be a supportive presence to them by believing them, listening, and providing reassurance that that abuse was not their fault, and that you are willing to stand by them as they heal and seek help in whatever form they need. Do not try to force the person to go to the police if they are not ready or do not want to report. As discussed, the criminal justice system sometimes serves to re-victimize and cause more pain to survivors. However, if a survivor does want to report, you can encourage and support them through that process, or help them to find a victim advocate. For more information about support and resources, visit www.rainn.org, or call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
by rachelthemuse | Jan 21, 2018 | Anxiety, Mental Health, Self-care
Many people are familiar with the practice of pet therapy, as well as service animals, but I’ve noticed a rise in both the benefits and recognition of a newer category of animals known as emotional support animals (ESA). Emotional support animals are not trained to perform specific tasks for their owners in the same way that service animals are. Service animals may be trained to do things that help people with mobility and sensory conditions or other disabilities, and they are covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which means that they legally are allowed at any public place that their owner goes and receive protections from housing discrimination, among other legal protections. They specifically do things that the individual cannot do for themselves, such as guiding or alerting people, picking up objects, responding to PTSD symptoms under duress, or assisting with other tasks. Emotional Support Animals are not specifically trained to do these things, but may otherwise provide comfort and reduce distress in conditions such as anxiety and depression. ESAs are not service animals and are not covered under the ADA. Nevertheless, emotional support animals can be an important and legitimate tool for people who experience relief from distress when spending time with and receiving affection from their animals.
The benefits of service animals are considered a necessary aid to people with special needs. We have long been accepting of service animals in public places (I once saw a woman with a service pony in a Target), and more recently have increased the training and accessibility of service animals for veterans through different programs specifically targeted for veterans with physical or mental health injuries. However, despite these socially acceptable and recognized benefits, people with less severe conditions are sometimes mocked or dismissed when claiming the need for an emotional support animal. It’s true that with any specially recognized category there is potential for abuse by people without true needs who want to claim benefits. Yet just because someone’s condition doesn’t necessarily disable them, this doesn’t mean that their ESA isn’t providing a true benefit to them.
Many people who are high functioning have learned to cover their conditions well, and continue to work and engage in other areas of their lives while still suffering from depression or anxiety in private. When an ESA can provide some relief from these symptoms and comfort to those who are suffering, I can find little reason to deny people the right to maintain access to their animals. Mostly, people with ESAs simply want access to housing that they may otherwise be denied if they want to bring their animal with them. Apartment complexes with no pet policies will usually allow ESA animals with documentation from a medical or mental health provider certifying the need for an ESA, whereas they would be legally required to do so under the ADA with a certified service animal.
An emotional support animal is more than a pet. While from the outside it may look as though someone is functioning just fine, you don’t know what symptoms a person may be experiencing privately. Anyone who has loved an animal can attest to the very real comfort and companionship they provide. An ESA can be an invaluable tool for people with anxiety, depression, or other related conditions that helps them improve their quality of life and cope with their symptoms. With proper training and care, there is little downside to accepting ESAs more openly in our society and reducing the stigma towards people who use them responsibly. Even if you do not need an ESA or suffer from a mental health condition, your relationship with your pet is meaningful and can improve your quality of life. Bonding with an animal helps you focus on the needs of another being, and they can reward you with affection and unconditional love. If you want to learn more about ESAs, visit therapypet.org.
