Self-Care A-Z: Moving From Self-Less to Self-FULL - The Journey of Self-Care
by Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, lead co-editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals
"Social work is a self-less profession." How do you viscerally respond to that assertion? I submit that this core message is an insidiously detrimental element of our profession. This selflessness identity weakens our effectiveness and, more crucially, damages our very human-ness. Instead, we urgently need to promote a self-full profession.
A Crisis Magnifies Our Core Invisibility
The COVID-19 crisis amplifies many aspects of society, such as health disparities, global connections, cultural connotations, and political corruption. For social work, it magnifies the significant need for our profession. At the same time, it uncovers the profession’s invisibility and marginalization. And, at the micro level, it accentuates our “selflessness.”
You know or are living some of these poignant stories: Social workers are lamenting, “Why aren’t we being acknowledged in the public’s gratitude of frontline personnel?” “Why isn’t my agency prioritizing my safety?” Social workers doing home visits - even against agency directives, at times - are compromising their (and clients') well-being. Others express discomfort with not being in the fray - because our worth is defined by serving others. Myriad examples demonstrate the “selflessness” social work identity, both internalized and imposed.
Although the magnitude of this crisis amplifies them, these phenomena aren’t new. Delving deeply into self-care for more than a decade, I continually encounter them. A core, embedded identity of “selflessness” translates into many problematic consequences. Diminished social worker self-worth, corporately and individually, contributes to lower value, income, recognition, credibility, impact, and viability.
With selflessness as a core identity, self-care is eschewed as self-serving - that is, selfish. With selflessness as the epitome, self-care is antithetical. The dissonance has astounding, exponential reverberations. We must deconstruct this damaging selflessness invisibility.
Fully Human
Even a rudimentary understanding of sexism makes the connection: Lauded for being “selfless,” social work is 83% women and considered a “feminine” profession. Glennon Doyle’s current bestseller, Untamed, is a brilliant and bold woman-ifesto! Among other crucial points, Doyle offers a crystallizing analysis of how “selflessness” diminishes and damages women - and the world. Doyle’s articulation aptly describes the social work profession!
In the following excerpt from Doyle’s book (p. 75), I substitute “social worker” for women. Our culture “defines selflessness as the pinnacle of [social work]….[We] are to lose [ourselves] in service to others.” Doyle observes, “Selfless [social workers] make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one.” Doyle declares that selflessness serves the oppressor.
Doyle proclaims: “…we need [social workers] who are full of themselves.” She concludes, when we are full of ourselves, we “say and do what must be done.”
Self-Care: Becoming Self-Full
Dear Colleagues/Humans: To be most fully human, we must reclaim our selves. To be the most help-full and impact-full practitioners, we must function in self-full ways. Ultimately, selflessness creates invisible martyrdom. In contrast, self-fullness engenders exponential humanity.
Self-less invisibility is internalized oppression. In her thought-provoking post, “The politics of self-care," Dr. Jalana S. Harris asks: “Who’s served by our consistent prioritization of others’ needs over our own?” Harris asserts that self-care is liberation from the oppressor.
Self-care is how we become SELF-FULL! Radical, wholistic self-care is an antidote to the problems of selflessness. It’s how we move to serving out of abundance, rather than exhaustion and emptiness. Enacting self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-love, self-care fosters visible, vital self-fullness.
To create this Full visibility, we must envision it. What does it mean to be Self-Full? It is to be Grate-Full. It is to be Joy-Full. It is to have a Meaning-Full career. It is to have an Impact-Full vocation. Lest we think that Self-Full is only happy parts, it is also experiencing the FULLness of life, including Sorrow-Full and Pain-Full. It is to have a Full-filling lifestyle. It is to be, as Doyle says, “Full of ourselves!” And, in our Full-ness, we can be most Help-Full.
Living out of authentic, abundant Full-ness, as contrasted with invisible, unfilled self-lessness isn’t easy. We need grace, realizing that self-fullness is a journey of becoming. Self-fullness requires consistent re-filling through individualized self-care. At the same time, macro systems - organizations and the profession itself - must re-vision and operationalize social work as a self-full profession.
This COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity to put our full selves into a visible and vibrant professional identity: “Social work is a self-full profession.”
Peace, Love, & Self-Care,
Erlene
Dr. Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, is a Partner in The Wellness Group, ETC. This LLC provides evaluation, training, and consultation for organizational wellness and practitioner well-being. Dr. Grise-Owens is lead editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals. As a former faculty member and graduate program director, she and a small (but mighty!) group of colleagues implemented an initiative to promote self-care as part of the social work education curriculum. Previously, she served in clinical and administrative roles. She has experience with navigating toxicity and dysfunction, up-close and personal! Likewise, as an educator, she saw students enter the field and quickly burn out. As a dedicated social worker, she believes the well-being of practitioners is a matter of social justice and human rights. Thus, she is on a mission to promote self-care and wellness!