Clinical Intersections: What About Us? The Mental Health of Social Workers, Pandemic Edition
Social workers are afraid they're doing it all wrong in this pandemic. We are trained in nuance and subtlety. We weren’t trained to live in a masked world. Our cats and dogs are in the room. We need national advocacy and guidance.
Clinical Intersections: Practicing While Grieving
We are all grieving during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no technique or strategy that will make us feel more prepared right now. The only goal, really, is to get through it connected and open and in relationship.
Clinical Intersections: What It Really Feels Like To Be a Social Worker
Of course, there is no universal feeling that defines being a social worker. However, I do believe there are some unifying, unsaid themes.
Clinical Intersections: Disavowal and the Politics of Naming Whiteness
In social work training, we discuss working with structural forces and power differences by naming them and the ways they are showing up in the room. But how does this intervention fit within the general theory of what is curative for our clients?
But What Should I Say Next? 5 Tips for Social Workers
What should I say next? This question, arising after the paperwork of intakes and goal setting, can feel terrorizing to social work students and new clinicians. It gets at the heart of what we do and the desire to always say the right next thing.
Clinical Intersections: America Is Traumatized
As clinicians, it is our responsibility to create spaces in which people can feel safe from a traumatizing world. It is important for us to allow people room to not only have refuge, but to show up as their authentic selves.
Clinical Intersections: Loss and the Edge of Loss
As social workers, we sit with a lot of loss. Depending on the type of social work, the death of a client can be a regular part of the work. For me, that’s not the case, or at least it wasn’t until this year. Peter reflects on loss of a client.
Clinical Intersections: On Being a Non-Binary Kid - A Parent-Child Interview
Danna Bodenheimer interviews 8 1/2-year-old Lee about being a trans/non-binary kid. The important thing for parents to know is that they cannot make their children trans and they also cannot stop their children from becoming trans.
Clinical Intersections: The Remnants of Trauma and the Role of Self-Care
Given that trauma, which I am defining as an assault on vulnerability, attachment, and development that leads us to feel endangered and out of control, enters us throughout our work days as social workers, what are we supposed to do about it?
What About Us? The Mental Health of Social Workers
The more we talk about being in the same sea as our clients, the more we can demystify the stigma around mental illness that keeps all of us from building the robust teams we need to continue our work in this powerful field of social work.
Clinical Intersections: Becoming Visible
I had gender affirming surgery while working in an environment that respects and celebrates this step for me. In disclosing this part of my journey to my clients, I made a decision to enter the therapeutic relationship authentically.
Clinical Intersections: Grief, Trauma, and Complex Trauma - 5 Questions & Answers for Social Workers
The more we use the word trauma to describe the sequelae from psychological stressors, the more we lose the nuance around ways trauma can show up and make itself known. These questions and answers clarify differences between grief, trauma, & C-PTSD.
Clinical Intersections: Boundaries for Survival
What does it mean to have bad boundaries and what are good ones? How can I get some and keep them? And why is this so hard? Professional and personal reflections on boundaries and empathy.
Clinical Intersections: The Intake Process Is Sacred When Serving LGBTQ Folks - What Social Workers and Other Clinicians Need To Know
Consider the steps someone goes through to become a client at your organization. At each step, there are ways to ensure that LGBTQ people will have a positive experience.
Clinical Intersections: Can I Be Real a Second?
Something is wrong. Free yourselves from the idea that you are what is wrong. You, social workers, are the most right thing out there. This is the first entry in the new Clinical Intersections blog.
