HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ME?

 

As I began writing this blog my focus was (and for the most part still is) on aspects of the licensure process for MSW graduates that are seeking to acquire the LCSW or the LMSW license.  I began to ponder how much self-disclosure:

·         Did I want to do?

·         Was necessary to effectively communicate about licensure?

·         Might be helpful to MSWs and even LCSWs to put into context my journey as a social worker?

·         Was necessary to accomplish Erickson’s developmental task of “Generativity vs. Stagnation”?

I have decided that I do need to share with you a part of my personal life experience that occurred concurrently with my social work professional career.  That life experience is what I call my “Medical Journey.”   I have shared the challenges of my Medical Journey from 2000 to 2013 in my book “Life is Difficult and OTSD.”  Now, you are not going to find the diagnosis “OTSD” in the DSM.  It stands for “Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder.”  I tell my friends that I have difficulty getting to the ”P” part of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  What do I mean by “Ongoing”?  Part of what I mean is that I have had 40 hospitalizations from the year 2000 to now (May 2022).   I think when social workers talk about biopsychosocial focus, we sometimes don’t realize the magnitude of impact the “bio” part might have on an individual.   I know the “bio” part- my medical journey part- is a constant presence for me every day. 

            A friend of mine at church said to me one Sunday that many people at church admired the way that I have coped with the many challenges my medical journey has given me.  I thanked him for sharing that with me and I jokingly said to him: “I didn’t know it was a multiple-choice test; what were the other options?”

             Sometimes you only get to learn about a part of your “self” when you are put into a situation or a specific experience.  I heard that Mark Twain once said, “A man learns something by carrying a cat by the tail that he can learn no other way.”  I discovered that I am someone who when confronted with major physical illness, major surgery, and ongoing challenges to my life and health I have tenacity and fighting energy that comes to the forefront.  I was not aware of that part of myself until I experientially was faced with my medical journey. 

            In writing, the blog I began to feel like I was only telling half of the story if I did not include some self-disclosure about the medical journey that occurred concurrently with my advocacy for the social work profession and social work clients.  I bring that same tenacity that I express in my medical journey to my advocacy for social work professional concerns.  For example, one of my colleagues (a Licensed Professional Counselor) in my group practice came to me one day and told me she had a 9-year-old girl as a client.  The parents were divorced.   The child reported to the therapist that the father was sexually abusing her during the weekend visits.  The therapist did all the correct things.  The therapist documented the allegations of abuse, contacted child protective services, and made a report of suspected abuse of a child, and provided emotional support to the child.  Two days later the father of the child asked for a complete copy of the child’s therapy record.  There is a Code of Virginia statute that allows for the refusal to release the child’s record to the parent if the therapist believes the release would be harmful to the child.  However, the language in that Code section says “…the treating physician or treating clinical psychologist…”.  It did not name Licensed Professional Counselor or Licensed Clinical Social Worker.  I found a way for us to get the question about releasing the child’s record to the parent in front of the Juvenile Domestic and Relations Court Judge.  We and the child “got lucky” and the Judge ruled that the record did not have to be released.  I decided that I did not want children in Virginia to have to “get lucky” to be protected.  For the next 10 years, I worked to get the Code of Virginia changed to include LCSWs specifically named in the Code so children were protected.  Sometimes it takes tenacity to spend 10 years being a social work “change agent.”  During that same 10-year period I had 11 hospitalizations.   One of those hospitalizations was to have surgery to amputate my right leg above the knee due to an aneurysm rupturing behind the right knee.  I know about resiliency not just from textbooks, but I learned experientially about resilience.  For me, the phrase “One Day at a Time” is not just a slogan from Alcoholics Anonymous but is a lived experience for me. Just because I felt well today did not mean anything about what shape I would be in tomorrow.

            I hope in my making this self-disclosure that it makes sense to you that I needed to tell the personal part of the story as well as the social work part of the story.  I had to integrate both of my experiences concurrently.  Part of accomplishing the task of Generativity is for me to be real in sharing my knowledge with MSWs in the process of becoming LCSWs.  So, I have decided that when it seems relevant, I will share some of my medical journey with you and hopefully it will help us to connect with each other as real people not just as professional clinical social workers.