Things on my mind

I have a lot on my mind these days.

The first is that I feel like a job opportunity is fucking me around.  I am heading for a third interview tomorrow – sounds great but it is also with a third manager.  The first manager had my references checked but didn’t hire me.  The second manager just chatted with me about who I am and said I would know tomorrow if she hires me.  Then today, I get a call from the HR lady – yet another manager wants to meet me.  I know interview practice is a good thing, but this is ridiculous.  I have decided I am not meeting another manager after tomorrow.  I don’t need a job that fucks me around before hiring!  I don’t care how desperately I need a job, or how little related experience I have.  Bring them all in, and I will dazzle them all at once!

I also feel like my practicum is trying to find reasons to fail me.  Thankfully, they don’t have the right to fail me, and I am not going to fail it (the instructor who has the right has made that clear as I complained all semester).  As you know, I have struggled with this practicum from the beginning.  I have tried to do what I need to do, tried to make it the best of it.  I have researched issues some of our children have.  I have begged to go out with social workers.  I am quick to jump on anything they offer me.  However, the week before my midterm evaluation, I was told that I wasn’t meeting expectations and had “three days to fix it”.  I had been told not to talk to the clients, and then got in trouble for not talking to the clients.  But, I don’t know about childhood development and am not in a field that is training me to know.  I feel like we are doing it again.  Last week, my field instructor went on a home visit without me.  She said that it was more a social call and I wouldn’t enjoy it.  Whatever.  I figured she was using it as an excuse to go home early anyways.  Come Tuesday though, she has changed her mind.  I need to see this client, because she is a social work client, just not one that we currently deal with – and we have resumed a friendlier role.  I get taken along.  I am given no information about the client we are about to meet.  I am told that I need to ask her lots of questions.  We get there, and I am introduced to the client as a social work student.  She says “I am going to scare you today” and laughs.  Great.  She shared a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff which is shocking.  She talked for about 30 minutes then both her and my person turn to me and say “questions?”.  I said I didn’t have any questions at this time.  They told me I had to.  I did get out of the awkward situation but I am pretty sure because we said it was time to go.  As we were leaving, my person told me and the client that she would drop me off another time and leave me there so we had to chat.  She asked me in the car why I had nothing to say (hinting at I need to take responsibility for my learning).  I told her that I felt like asking questions in this situation seemed rude.  I only had curiosity questions, and they are not appropriate for a social worker to ask.  I get told that I need to learn how to ask difficult questions at some point, may as well do it in a safe environment where the client wants to share her story with anyone that asks.  I said that in our classes we are told to ask expanding questions but not to pry.  This client does not currently need a social worker in her life.  Two days later, I don’t know what I could have asked without being noisy.  I have talked it over with classmates and we all agree that there was nothing I could ask that was for the clients’ interests.  Everything I could ask was for my own benefit at the expense of the client.  So anyways, my final evaluation in next week and I see it saying something like “doesn’t interact with clients”. But during our conversation about why I had nothing to say, I was also told that I need to build relationship with clients.  I wanted to yell, yes, build relationship, not ask questions for me after 30 minutes!!  I see it biting me in the ass, but I remain convinced I made the right ethical decision.  Just so frustrating and I am so done with it.

And the final thing on my mind this week… it’s a big one and I am not totally sure how to even write about it.

A friend and I were talking the other night.  We talked about my relationship history.  We were talking about my past, and my sexual life.  We talked about cancer and how endometritisis is not related.  We talked about the men I have dated.  We talked about me calling rape on my boyfriends because I just wasn’t willing. I talked for a long time.  I explained a lot of things.  When I stopped talking, she asked (in a totally gentle and real way) if I had been abused as I exhibit trauma signs.

I had panic attacks during sex with my last boyfriend.  Curled into a ball, crying hysterically, afraid to be touched.   I told myself this was a first time and a fluke thing.  Then it happened again.  We decided I was afraid to orgasm.  He wanted to keep trying (not those nights obviously).  He thought if we worked on my tolerance it might help.  Maybe with a normal girl.

As I talked about my past, and these panic attacks, a thought came to me.  My first boyfriend, ten years ago.  I cried when we had sex, and I was madly in love with him.  I wanted a future with him.  I wanted babies with him.  He was nothing but gentle with me and stopped when I cried.  But, he didn’t understand why I was crying.  Neither did I.

Another thought came to me.  I have always been afraid of men.  I was uncomfortable around my friends’ dads.  It didn’t matter how long I had known the man for, or how nice he was to me, I was afraid of them.  This I always blamed on not having grown up with a man around.  I just didn’t know how to have a dad.  I have a couple of uncles that I feel uncomfortable around to this day.  I always told myself that they were weird men.

Now, I might be projecting my learning onto myself, and that is something I am aware of as well.  But talking with a classmate, who is learning the same trauma triggers as me; it became clear to both of us that something has caused this in my life.  People do not grow up terrified of men.  Panic attacks come from somewhere.

Now the question is, do I need to know the trauma that caused these issues in me, or can I heal without the knowledge?  I am on a healing journey, and I know the sex thing is still heavy on my mind.  I know I am healing some of the issues behind it.  But if there is a deeper issue, do I need to know? Do I even want to know?  If I am on this journey now and now is a good time for it,

It would explain the panic attacks. It would explain the dissociative states I go into while having sex.  I think of anything but what is happening.  I know that this could be a side effect of my anti-depressants.

So, I talked to my counselor about this today.  She said that it could be anything I suggested – that I didn’t have a man in the house and I didn’t have that kind of experience growing up, so having males around confused me.  But, she also said that maybe, there was something else.  She said that maybe somewhere along the line, a man made me feel uncomfortable in something he did or said or a way he looked at me.  She said it didn’t have to be “abuse” to be trauma.

When I think about the four men that bother me off the top of my head, I can’t think of specific examples, but I can see them doing something that would bother me.  One has always been rough, and has scared me in how he talks to me, and shakes my hand.  One of the men compared his daughter and me in sexual ways – but I didn’t really see that until we were well into our teens.  One of these men I do not know at all and never had a desire to – he just wasn’t ever around.  And the final man I can think of, I think he just had a different lifestyle than me.  I can picture his son doing things that were not okay in my house, but every house is different.  What is okay to me might be weird to them.  So I can sort of see how all of these men might have caused some sort of reaction in me.  And that’s okay.  If any of those men made me feel uncomfortable as a child, it is something they need to deal with, not something I need to carry for them.  So, I am going to try that when a man makes me feel uncomfortable, to think about where it came from.  Is it his tone? Is it his body language? Is he physically doing something?  Why do I feel uncomfortable? And if it is something he is doing, I can walk away, or whatever.  I don’t have to deal with his issues.

I don’t think I was ever touched or abused or anything.  But, it is interesting to see how that could have happened.  Whatever did happen, happened.  I want to heal from my previous self-inflicted trauma.  And knowing things makes things better.  Knowing things makes them less scary even when they are terrifying!