Meanderings about work and care

What is your relationship to work?

What is my relationship to work?

I want to be able to care about my work as a psychotherapist.

I wonder if my sense of care is in disarray.

And how does this relate to my past?

As a child, I was so unsure whether I could love my mother. I was torn about it. I was very back and forth about it. I believed I needed to love her, or else I would die. But she was so blase about love as if love were a luxury or even a joke. As if it were something to laugh at and be entertained by. I felt like a fool and learned not to take myself so seriously. But sometimes the seriousness would come up and I would feel terror. I would fear that my values were askew.

Love, including care, was a vital force that I needed very much. If I didn’t care about being loving I could become a psychopath. No, love and care were essential.

Yet I felt l like I was the only one holding down that fort. Yet I would also dissociate and move into another state of mind because the pressure was too much.

Changing from state to state was confusing. I tried to piece the different parts of me together and couldn’t. I am still trying and it’s becoming a work of my life: to mend the non-integrated, almost tattered, pieces of my mind.

Back to the present, I want to be more consistently caring. When vulnerable people come to me, fickleness just won’t do.

Being cared for, on an emotional level, was not a staple of my life. I worry I might not know what the meaning of care really is. Was it having a roof over my head and food to eat? Was it a matter of seeing through and into my parents’ good intentions? My tired, overworked immigrant parents. Or do I need more.

I think I needed more and I’m not sure how to get more.

There are moving parts in me. Imagine what happens. These moving parts are sometimes caring toward my clients. Sometimes the caring parts are not present. So sitting across from someone’s pain can be daunting and debilitating, frustrating, shameful and despairing. I am often my own fiercest interrogator.

In these moments of weakness I like to remind myself that maybe I am not a problem to be fixed, but a being to be loved. This softens me in a way that allows me to better listen, and maybe points to how my clients want to be seen.

This piece of writing isn’t a solution. It’s part of a process of working out a problem. Thank you for sharing this part of the journey with me.