Brief Respite

I'm sitting in the Au Bon Pain here in the vistor's lobby, decompressing after a ridiculous day and savoring my hour before I go to work here. I've been working with a exceptionally troubled, severely disturbed individual for about three weeks now...he's as troubled as anybody I've worked with. A guy hanging on for dear life. He's got a bit of everything: depression, mania, psychosis, dissociative episodes. You name it. But he wants help terribly badly and I'm very fond of him.

Spent two hours going over test results with him, which was emotional for everyone in the room. Then I went to a completely different group and processed the recent death of a group member. The group was difficult for various reasons: the death, the group, the therapists...again, you name it, it was in the room.

Then I went to supervision where I got to talk about why the day was so hard for me (this is at, yes, 12:00 p.m.). That was another tough hour. Then I ran my regularly scheduled group, which turned into a defacto PTSD group, and the guys were talking about some really raw stuff. Then I gave a completely different guy a psychological assessment, which is always an emotional and mental challenge. Then more supervision and some computer charting.

I love every split second of my new career (guess I can't really call it that for a few more years). My experience this year has been nothing short of profound. I love the work, the patients, my supervisors. All of it.

But I haven't learned how to remove myself from the dangerous, vulnerable emotional experience that sometimes accompanies the job. This is what experience is for. This is why I have to do this for a few years as a trainee. Love it. Hard. It's supposed to be hard. But hard is, you know, hard.

So I'm sitting having a veggie wrap at the lobby Au Bon Pain, looking out on a beautiful day, watching the traffic jam on the Eisenhower Expressway. Don't really want to work tonight, but my calendar and bank account suggest that this is where I need to be, so here I sit.

I'm glad I can eat a veggie wrap and watch the traffic.