As most people are aware, I tend to be on the more emotional side when it comes to...well, life. And I internalize EVERYTHING and EVERYONE.
In my training to become a social worker, I'm learning that I need to find balance between my personal/emotional self and my professional self. It's not that I'm not allowed to feel emotion as a professional. I must be sensitive to emotion as a social worker; it comes with the territory. If I didn't FEEL then I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. But before I can find that balance I need to first BELIEVE in my professional self. I feel very much like a "kid" right now. I often feel like I don't know what the hell I'm doing. All the theories and the methods I've learned are fine and good, but in the moment I often don't know how to respond to what's going on. It's almost like I'm playing "pretend", except I'm extremely aware that what I'm experiencing in my field work is NOT pretend. It's ridiculously real and heart-wrenchingly hard. Am I making any sense? I realize I'm being quite vague. I've got a lot of thoughts swirling through my head at the moment and am not sure how to formulate them into words.
I've had my fair share of doubts since I started this gig called grad school, that I don't know if I can do this kind of work and remain a functioning, contributing member of society. But I've also never seriously considered walking away from it all. I have had enough faith in myself, or have relied on the faith others have in me (namely, a loving God's) when I felt like I had none left, to keep going. If I said it once, I'll say it a billion more times. Life is hard. I know that now more than ever, and it's not from my own life experience. What I've been through is "chump change" compared to what I've witnessed.
Being an emotional person is a big part of who I am, and if I internalize, I internalize. Social work school and practice are teaching me how to harness the emotional, internalizing side of me into someone I believe in and am proud to be.
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