Beyond “Fixing” It: Finding Strength in Your Limits as a Social Worker
by Mandy Gawf, MSW
If you casually drove through the neighborhood, you wouldn’t see it. You would see the evidence of a neighborhood struggling with a variety of structural issues - among them, declining economic opportunity, an affordable housing shortage, and gun violence. Not that anybody did, casually drive through the neighborhood, that is. I soon discovered that most people actively avoided the area. It didn’t attract outsiders, but there I was, an outsider. I was completing my MSW practicum at a community center that was tucked in a neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. The more time I spent there, the more the unique strengths and assets embedded in the place became apparent. They were just hidden. The place also brought to light many strengths hidden within myself that have been important in my practice of social work ever since. One area of growth catalyzed by my work at that site was the discovery of my limits as a helper.
In my conversations with various social workers, this is a lesson that generally presents itself very early in the course of one’s social work career and can even be the reason that students or early social workers opt for a different line of work. Of course, without taking regular time to reflect and refocus, even seasoned social workers can be worn down over time by the weight of suffering we can accumulate each day from the people and places we encounter in social work. I hope by sharing the lesson of finding my limits as a helper, those in the midst of the same struggle - whether early in their career or established practitioners - will feel some solidarity and clarity.
I was in the midst of completing my MSW degree at Jane Addams College of Social Work. As you can imagine, having come from a culturally homogeneous rural area of eastern Oregon, I found that practicing social work in a minority-majority community in Chicago aided my professional growth exponentially and exposed me to a host of new experiences.
It was in that context that I first came to struggle with my own limits as a helper. I hit up against my limits in a few different ways that are common to many students and practitioners early on in their careers when they begin officially “doing social work.” I have come to think of these limits as my perimeter, where I explored the edges of what I could do as a helper. My placement at that community center on the west side taught me again and again, sometimes in painful ways, that progress is almost always slower than you want. Some days, I had to learn to say, “I did my best today, if nothing more.” But until I learned that lesson, I was left, almost every day, feeling that what I could provide was so inadequate and fell so short of what I wanted to be able to do.
About two months into my placement, I met S. She ended up in the area after fleeing a domestic violence situation on the south side. She was six months pregnant but had yet to see a doctor. She was living precariously housed, moving from couch to couch every night. She had been doing that nightly shuffle long enough that her friends were done letting her crash, and she found herself facing street homelessness. I had worked with her cousin a few weeks earlier, and her cousin asked her to come see me, one of the only social service providers actually present in the neighborhood.
She was scared, alone, and tired. I felt the weight of what was at stake for her. If the situation didn’t change for her in four short months, she would be attempting to navigate the cold, overwhelmed Chicago shelter system as a first-time mother to a newborn. She wasn’t connected to other services at the time, and I unconsciously took on a disproportionate sense of responsibility.
I felt so limited in my role as an outsider to the neighborhood, by the huge structural issues that were causing a series of impacts in her life, and by the limits of my own time, experience, and abilities. Nevertheless, we continued to take small steps together. I drove her to DHS and waited in line with her to get her connected to SNAP and WIC. We worked together to get her to free prenatal care. I petitioned every source I knew to find her assistance for a deposit, while she searched for apartments. In our conversations, I learned that she was still working full time as a caregiver, despite the pain the manual labor caused her during her pregnancy. As a result of the lack of transportation in the neighborhood, she often walked miles to get to the various patients she provided in-home care for.
Although hitting my limits was a difficult feeling, I also found myself amazed at the privilege of knowing S. I experienced one of the amazing aspects of social work - witnessing the everyday heroics of people like S. Most people don’t see the struggle S and so many others go through to achieve what comes so easily to many of us - housing, healthcare, food, work. As social workers, we balance the difficulty and the honor of witnessing everyday heroes. When we realize this, we lose the need to feel the sense of responsibility to “fix it” for our clients, as I felt early on working with S.
A few days before my time at that practicum site ended, I found a community group that was willing to donate the amount needed for S to pay a deposit on an apartment. When I told her the news about the deposit, she cried. Then she asked me to be her child’s godmother. As one who had been thinking about my limits quite a bit, we talked about how my role in her life was not permanent, but that soon she would have connections in her life that would be permanent.
The discomfort of hitting up against your perimeter as a helper is something one has to come to terms with to remain in the social work profession. If unaddressed, this discomfort can become compassion fatigue (see Smith, 2014, to understand that concept more fully). However, as a true proponent of the strengths perspective, I think that, ultimately, this discomfort can be a gift. The discomfort is a reminder of a vision - the vision of what we as a community (whatever community you live in) need to be doing better. The discomfort refocuses me on what I am striving for.
By becoming aware of my limits as a helper, I can now strive for this vision while learning not to be paralyzed by suffering.
If you have mastered this or you are still striving toward the vision of community that brought you to social work, you can be an inspiration to others. If we are able to share this important lesson with new social workers or those working in the field who may be feeling small in the magnitude of suffering, I suspect that we will be a stronger, healthier profession.
Reference
Smith, M. (2014). Compassion fatigue in social work students. Field Educator, 4 (1). Retrieved from http://fieldeducator.simmons.edu/article/compassion-fatigue-in-social-work-students/
Mandy Gawf received her MSW from Jane Addams College of Social Work in Chicago. She is now growing in the social work profession, working in the housing and homelessness field in rural Oregon. She maintains a social work blog focused on connection and reflection at swcompanion.blog.