I figured tonight is the best night to write about myself.
In my diary, I started calling it "manuscriptive therapy." It's the time I can take purely for myself before I start something big ("big" relative to my circumstance, ie. a big paper, a big homework assignment, a big milestone with a client). Writing (my thoughts out) is the most therapeutic outlet for me, but ever since I started school, I gave myself less and less time to do it even though I knew I mentally depended on it. About a month into school, I started manuscriptive therapy (which still doesn't go as ideally as I'd like).
Today I write because I'm about to start a big semester next week. For some reason, I think my first foundational year is going to be the most challenging year, and more so during this summer semester with classes and work crammed into three measly little months. Also, I hate to be so frank but I absolutely dread the social aspect of school. This grad program has certainly made me more aware of myself, which is that I have abnormally high social anxiety, sometimes accompanied by minor panic attacks. I learned to regulate myself a little better towards the end of the semester, because I gave myself no option to give up. I've never worked so hard in my academic career, and I don't know what the hell I'm doing after I get my MSW, but I've never been more sure of a path for myself because it so much-- from the core of my very being-- aligns with my values. And, by that I mean the original foundation of social work, and not today's standards of clinical practice and shortcuts to becoming a therapist. While I hate to criticize something that I don't know if I completely dislike in the first place, I think I just hate the idea that to others, an MSW is just a gateway to the world of diagnoses. What about the vulnerable populations that are susceptible to all this economic inequality (literally the root of all problems)? What about our messed up government system? It makes me want to defy my own program and say fuck you to it all.
But the thing is, someone has to do this kind of work. And while the poor have really cyclical and chronic hardships, rich people have their own kind of problems too. Therapy exists on this side of the field for a reason (I'd like to say it's because psychotherapists don't have the adequate empathic training that social workers have). But, maybe for myself, it just means I should take the opportunity to rally up other social workers and like-minded people who believe in what I believe: that equality for the marginalized matters.
This week, I'm going to take a vacation away from my social work bubble. Except on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, when I'll be in field practice.
