Peace and Mental Health.

I am studying A Course in Miracles.  I don't find it easy to admit how important it is to me,  and how I feel my mind changing now. But the Urtext is something else! A kind of practical commentary on the teaching of the course. The word "miracles" is a bit misleading. The Miracles are to do with shifts in perception rather than feeding the five thousand. It makes it sound like a flaky thing, want to learn to turn water into wine?
Especially to a down to earth social worker, who needs to be very pragmatic...
But reading in the Urtext about peace and mental health, it is very clear how the Course "scribes" were psychologists! Peace actually IS mental health and what the Course says seems very relevant to my personal journey and also in thinking about social work and clients.
"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles, of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others."
Time, almost, to think about this in my life and in a client's life. For example the young mother who needs to detox, and has an 11 year old daughter who does not have anyone to support her or offer her a place to stay for a few weeks. 
I don't know the answer. My first response is to feel stressed and inadequate.  Then to do more assessment. What if there is another way to look at all of this? 
Young mother is convinced that without moving to a particular area, her life is doomed. She is convinced she needs to detox from 15g of diazepam.   She blames her daughter for getting in the way of her recovery and says so loud and clear. Mother and daughter love each other but resent one another too. 
What if young mother were not so fixated on the solutions she has in her mind? What if she let go of detox, and began to make staying calm and and at peace within, her main goal? What if she surrendered the need to make things happen the way she thinks they should, and she could be happy anyway?

Perhaps the problems would just vanish and a new solution would emerge. 

Well, she and her daughter would not need a social worker. And if it's true what I wrote about yesterday, that in Reality all is perfect, than the so called problems are not Real.

It feels amazing and liberating to write this. That this is the first step of spiritual social work. 

Problems are not Real. 

Everything that is confusing, upsetting, painful for my clients and myself is not Real. It is an absence of Love, and in young mother's case, her inner experience is of fear and lack of peace. So the first great gift I can offer, is to be Peace and to see Peace as her true state of being. 

Of course all the problems seem very real and difficult. But at a soul level, they are just clouds of nothingness. 

And maybe I've taken a very important step with this seeing...the first step of what I came into the world to do...spiritual social work.  It's just spiritual problem solving. I can't make young mother change her mind but I can see the truth of her being and everything flows from that. I hold to Peace and don't get sidetracked into making her problem into a very big deal. 

For the first time, I see the invitation to do this with all the situations at work. Seeing her mental pain, remembering the Soul and seeing it's beauty. 

A  new vision of social work....which IS at one with my spiritual path. Where I and my clients are on the same side, whether we know it or not. 

Down to Earth with a Bump...?

It was all going so well! Since Christmas, I had a shift to a new perspective and way of being at work. So different. I was quite at peace and happy that everything was going to work out and it did not matter what happened...so long as I was doing the best I could and trusting in grace to supply the difference.
But yesterday I met my colleague/ friend Y and she was so upset. She has been told by management that she is basically not up to the mark. And I feel disturbed, that she has been given no support, just this cold, dismissive reaction. I know she is working hard. I know also that it's so much easier to criticize and pick out the failings than to be on the front line doing the work.
I feel angry that she is treated this way. And angry that I also got pulled up about having blank sections in my assessment. There is too much work, it is that simple. But then, as Y says she was told, some people manage it. Yes, some people do. So everyone should.
I feel guilty that I haven't been treated like this, and guilty that by "managing it" or seeming to, I can be pointed to by management who say, she can cope. What management say is realistic, is realistic. There is a power struggle, with management saying the workload is doable, and staff saying "It is not" but somehow seeming to cope. Those who do not seem to cope will suffer the consequences. The power struggle of whose definition of reality is valid.
This sparks off a kind of rage and helplessness.
It seems thoroughly unethical to me. To be able to give someone a bad reference after 3 months in a job which they have been dumped on and given an impossible workload...Making it difficult for them to move on.  Not to mention the fear that this management style induces in the whole team.
On the same day comes the news that Essex council have to pay millions in compensation to the victims of child abuse. Their social workers did not intervene to protect some children whose father was known to have abused other children and they were subject to years of abuse.
Of course that is very sad. But to penalize a council in that way, with the ripple effect on how its social workers are perceived and how social work is generally perceived...seems a strange response. Where does the buck stop? This culture of entitlement costs society very dear. That money could have gone into training, investment (possibly in more social workers) with a "good will payment" and public apology to the individuals, and support to help them rebuild their lives. Now I as a social worker know that any individual can sue my employer for my mistakes....And the motivation for the work becomes fear, not love. If I am not very careful!
I woke again at 4 am to write this. Not the best preparation for a day which includes two potentially difficult visits to clients one of whom has already shouted at me down the phone.
Do I feel centered?  Do I feel at peace?  It feels like, back to the real world with a bump. And yet....I talk about the other reality here.

Launching out...2012

It's been a while since my last post. I reached a point where I did not want to write the same old stuff. Also, there was a challenge in my life, a spiritual challenge.  Most of my life I've been on a spiritual quest. It was something I shelved for a while. God wasn't doing what I wanted, I was overwhelmed and angry at work. Then glimmers of light appeared and I realized I would have to start being explicit about all of this in this blog or it was not going to be authentic.
This was scary. I've had a spiritual life, which had truckled along on its own track, and a social work/ reality life,which was on its own track. They were on seemingly parallel lines, so that you won't find much mention of spirituality until a couple of posts ago. But in late November I knew.... nope, can't carry on writing at any depth about my job, without including the spiritual aspect.
That means the blog might not be just about my social work reality any more, but my whole life reality. So should I start another blog? Or just allow this one to be spiritual? What does it matter?
OK, that is just picking up the threads, I explore it a bit more here.
So yesterday I was walking to a client's home. I had a choice of ways, since I did not know if her house was at one end of the street or the other. I chose what I thought was the right way. I realized it was probably not the shortest way. But I passed a shopfront for a bereavement charity, went in and got some leaflets. I was thinking this was a bit silly....I could get the information online. Still, the leaflets were tucked into my bag...
I did the interview with the client and she mentioned that her father had died some years ago and she still found it hard....I was surprised and felt so reassured. I hadn't known this would be an issue for this client, but my Higher Self/ Holy Spirit did and I felt I'd been prepared. So I left her with a leaflet....
The whole day, I was at times asking to be guided. I have so many cases, I have to trust that I will have nudges about things. In fact one of the big shifts in my consciousness is to accept the system is crazy. There is no point in resenting that. It is what it is. And I can choose to align myself with peace, joy and the will of God,  no matter how the craziness is playing out around me. That is the challenge I have somehow accepted now. It is so strange how a burden has lifted, and I feel like I am on a path now, not just going round in circles. Not before time....and probably just at the right time.
So from now on, this will be a focus of this blog....spirituality and social work in my life.