Change

I don't often write about my job. Perhaps because I am not sure if I should, possibly because I try really hard to not take work home with me, and potentially because I just don't even know where I'd start. But tonight I feel compelled, for one reason or another.

I've been at my job for over a year and a half now, starting off as the bright eyed, recent grad prepared to use therapy to save the world. Not that I'm all that different after less than two years of working in the field, but I have learned one important lesson in my short career thus far: change is the only constant. Jumping into the landscape of a new non-profit, I was prepared to be flexible. But really, I had no idea.

While sometimes (okay, most of the time), this much change can be hair pullingly frustrating for a planning addict like myself, there is some good that comes of it. Most recently, part of the change has meant that I've expanded the population I'm working with quite a good deal. On both a clinical and personal level, this means some serious growth for me. I am digging the change of pace, but I'm not going to lie, I'm emotionally strung out. I haven't figured out yet how to not be so affected from the struggles my clients face. And the more different populations I work with, the more I must try to wrap my head around so many types of struggles. I leave work many days with the lingering, unanswerable question of "why must it be just so hard for so many people?" I see real pain inflicting people's lives in ways that I never imagined, that is sometimes impossible to comprehend. 

One client in particular has me taking work home a lot lately. Shoot. This kid has been through a great deal, and for good reason he is resistant to therapy. On one particularly resistant day as of late, he looked at me straight in the eye and told me how he hated coming to therapy, how he got sick the night before and was tired of thinking about me at home. In a moment of  unsure disclosure, I looked him straight back in the eye and said, "I think about you at home too. I think about how I might be able to help you if you'd be willing to let me." He left a bit later, and when he did I shut the door and my eyes filled with tears thinking about just how much I wanted to be able to help (while my inner voice repeatedly chided me, poor boundaries Mariah, don't cry over this, you have miserably poor boundaries). 

Thus the hardest and ever evolving lesson of my journey as a young therapist. Change is indeed constant, but people don't change until they want to. And for some people, this means they never will. So the bigger question becomes (at least for me), how can I accept that they aren't ready (or able) to change and love them anyway?

My clients teach me more than I teach them most days (really, quite possibly every day). I can't really put this feeling into words, but the closest I can come is to say that my gratitude for them is unending. The perspective they provide through the gift of opening up their lives to me cannot be explained. My energy for life and love is renewed daily because of their willingness to share, even in their deepest moments of pain.