Kintsugi
Sponsor
I’m rapidly reorganizing my thinking and approaches at my new job working with adolescents with eating disorders in an inpatient/group home setting. It’s been pretty nonstop until today, as the organization is struggling to retain and regroup staff following major structural changes, and I was pretty much fast-tracked between being recommended by a therapist, my very old and close college friend, and being very highly trained thanks to the prestige of my former position with the government.
I remember starting my last job and feeling pretty overwhelmed there, too, so I’m trying not to make any snap decisions about the value of working at this facility. On the one hand, my friend helped me dodge a major bullet working for another institution, which I researched after being cautioned by her and found an outlandish number of lawsuits and former attendees claiming that they were extremely traumatized by the punitive nature of the facility. On the other hand, this facility lacks any consequences at all for its clients, and approaches to managing problematic behavior and guiding clients through the tumult of their disorders outside of their time with clinicians is very DIY because of the lack of structure and training. I’ve had to take it upon myself to set up meetings with various spokes of the medical team wheelhouse in order to garner a modicum of understanding regarding the policies and philosophies guiding the treatment of these teens.
Being thrown into the fray with little notice and less training, especially considering my own history of trauma and ED/chronically disordered eating habits, caused a weird internal backfire where I was positioned to be more reactive than proactive in my approach to managing the needs of the clients. The other staff are themselves completely fragmented in their approaches to this work, offering no stable or singular methodology or even the slightest appearance of consistency, even going so far as being completely oblivious to the main tenants of the treatment paradigm I was able to establish my first week through meetings with clinicians.
In short, it’s very chaotic, and I’m still trying to figure out how to approach these teens in my efforts to assist them. The one constant in my thinking is that I’d like to be the sort of person I needed when I was a traumatized teenager with a rabid case of anorexia.
So what is it you would do or say if you could go back as an adult to your adolescent self, whether you had PTSD, BPD, OCD, an ED, etc. at that juncture of your development?
Something I think is fundamental to my own experience is hearing the message I fought tooth and nail to refute or depose—that I am worthy, and there’s not a damn thing wrong with me.
Another thing I’ve tried to communicate—and I’ve been stared at like I’m speaking gibberish—is that even if it’s total crap that a teenager is the only one in a household doing the hard work, even though the adults should be pulling their own weight of accountability, that hard work will be a gift to your future self that just keeps on giving in adulthood.
Promulgating this messaging often feels like beating my head against a wall (that might actually have a greater tangible effect), but I’m trying nonetheless.
I’d love to hear some ideas from this community, especially those who have struggled with BPD since adolescence (or earlier).
I remember starting my last job and feeling pretty overwhelmed there, too, so I’m trying not to make any snap decisions about the value of working at this facility. On the one hand, my friend helped me dodge a major bullet working for another institution, which I researched after being cautioned by her and found an outlandish number of lawsuits and former attendees claiming that they were extremely traumatized by the punitive nature of the facility. On the other hand, this facility lacks any consequences at all for its clients, and approaches to managing problematic behavior and guiding clients through the tumult of their disorders outside of their time with clinicians is very DIY because of the lack of structure and training. I’ve had to take it upon myself to set up meetings with various spokes of the medical team wheelhouse in order to garner a modicum of understanding regarding the policies and philosophies guiding the treatment of these teens.
Being thrown into the fray with little notice and less training, especially considering my own history of trauma and ED/chronically disordered eating habits, caused a weird internal backfire where I was positioned to be more reactive than proactive in my approach to managing the needs of the clients. The other staff are themselves completely fragmented in their approaches to this work, offering no stable or singular methodology or even the slightest appearance of consistency, even going so far as being completely oblivious to the main tenants of the treatment paradigm I was able to establish my first week through meetings with clinicians.
In short, it’s very chaotic, and I’m still trying to figure out how to approach these teens in my efforts to assist them. The one constant in my thinking is that I’d like to be the sort of person I needed when I was a traumatized teenager with a rabid case of anorexia.
So what is it you would do or say if you could go back as an adult to your adolescent self, whether you had PTSD, BPD, OCD, an ED, etc. at that juncture of your development?
Something I think is fundamental to my own experience is hearing the message I fought tooth and nail to refute or depose—that I am worthy, and there’s not a damn thing wrong with me.
Another thing I’ve tried to communicate—and I’ve been stared at like I’m speaking gibberish—is that even if it’s total crap that a teenager is the only one in a household doing the hard work, even though the adults should be pulling their own weight of accountability, that hard work will be a gift to your future self that just keeps on giving in adulthood.
Promulgating this messaging often feels like beating my head against a wall (that might actually have a greater tangible effect), but I’m trying nonetheless.
I’d love to hear some ideas from this community, especially those who have struggled with BPD since adolescence (or earlier).