WOUNDED HEALERS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

It was one of those barge into the office occasions. 
CYCW: "Do something to this boy. He threw a metal toy car                -  this car - at me. It hit me on the breast."
ME: " Are you OK? Please go to the Clinic and get checked out".
CYCW " I'm not going to that place. Do something to this boy."
ME: " Leave me with the boy". 

He was a very little fellow.  Eventually he told me his story. He was playing with the car on the floor in the passage entrance to the dormitory. He was making car noises - loudly. It was the "quiet hour". After Sunday lunch there was a quiet hour for the houses.

 The child and youth care worker told him to stop. He stopped for a while but got bored, so he seated himself on the step at the entrance and played "cars" again. This time she yelled at him. "A lot of yelling", he said.  He heard her voice but the only words he heard were "Get out, get out!" He couldn't explain why he was playing, so he threw the car into the passage. He didn't mean that it should hit her."

It must have been a little under a year when I was told that she had had a mastectomy. She never ever herself told me. Not ever!

I was never allowed to forget that incident. At every turn I was told that I only cared for the children and young people. Child and youth care workers meant nothing to me. Twas as if I was not just the Director/Manager, but an uncaring father heading a family - her family. 

On Facebook there was a post from Claudia Roodt a trauma advisor. It will be shared later in the blog. Claudia Roodt was once the Director of a well established, quality residential facility for girls in Capetowm. She is well qualified to talk trauma and child and youth care work.

There rushed to mind a number of experiences in interviews for appointments as child and youth care workers over the years.

These were questions I found useful in assessing/revealing. personal character suitability for the nature of the work in a residential programme. Obviously "Why do you choose to be a child and youth care worker?" The answers to this question rang bells for me. "I have raised my own children. I have enough love in me to love many children. I  have been there  I know first hand how it is to have a difficult life".

The follow up question was: "Whats been the worst thing that has happened to you in your life?" 
Then next. "How did you deal with it?"

There were invariably and understandably, spoken and unspoken responses to this question. Some more likely to be spoken than others: divorce, death of a close family member -  child or spouse, the experience of some other kind of loss or violence like armed robbery, financial misfortune or failure.

The least likely to be spoken were parental abuse, an abusive relationship sexual assault.

 The line of the interview questions was to probe whether the applicants were carrying unhealed traumatic experiences Some say, rather harshly, "emotional baggage". I used to call it "Carrying a piano on his/her back'.

Claudia Roodt's post listed tunes that the piano plays.

"FIXING OTHERS
PEOPLE PLEASING
CO-DEPENDENCY
EXTERNAL VALIDATION NEEDED
LIVING ON HIGH ALERT
FEAR OF ABANDONMENT
DE-PRIORITIZING OWN NEEDS
NEED TO PROVE THEMSELVES
TOLERATES ABUSIVE BEHAVIOUR
ATTRACTS NARCISSISTIC PARTNERS
DIFFICULTY SETTING BOUNDARIES".

You can see. The hurt are drawn into being the 'wounded healer'. The stress is on the title of that list 
"UNHEALED CHILDHOOD TRAUMA MANIFEST AS ......" .....unhealed.

Let's look at the effects of coming into child and youth care with the scars of trauma unhealed. The examples and thinking come from my experience in the field and not from an academic or theoretical sources.

A therapeutic environment proved frequently to draw the wounded healer as there was an underlying unexpressed, perhaps unconscious attraction to be where there were the hurt and where healing happens in order to find healing of self. "If I am an instrument of healing in an environment of healing, I will heal also." ...Faulty thinking!

It was a staff meeting. Present, a young student Psychologist, doing a practical year of constructive delay before undertaking the Masters degree. She had been newly appointed as Programme Manager. An unqualified, but long serving child and youth care worker found a moment to find fault with the programme management of a young person in her care. The young Programme Manager defended her interventions with verbal skill and very credibly.

Next day, the office barge in. 
"I'm resigning" It was the young Programme Manager. " Here's my letter. I only  have to give you 24 hours notice." 

She explained why. At the meeting I didn't support her against the child and youth care worker. 
ME "I didn't support the child and youth care worker. I wasn't going to take sides with either of you. I thought that you were doing very well on your own. It's part of learning." 
PM "Last night I booked to go to Israel.  I'm going to work my year at a kibbutz. They all support each other in a kibbutz. You let me down. If you can do  it once you will do it again. You are this place!. I thought that I would be protected here.

Half an hour later. "This is not the first time I have run away after experiencing let down. I always do this. It's like Act 1 Scene 1 of a play which keeps repeating itself".

Oh, oh, painful childhood experience unspoken, untold, unhealed, unresolved.

The interview question "How did you deal with it - the traumatic experience?" If spoken, this is the key. "Seeking therapy from a professional is, oh, so frequently avoided when it is most needed. Then to discover that the nature of child and youth care work mirrors all those traumatic incidents through the lives of the children and raises them to the surface again.

The expected healing through being a healer in a therapeutic milieu is all too often experienced a let down and proves to be a heavier burden on self and the very children and young people designed to be healed. 

 Some organisations can and do provide therapeutic services to child and youth care workers. I can talk here from experience. I say this to urge child and youth care workers who experienced unhealed, unfinished business from childhood or adult trauma to accept professional therapy.

Emotional fatigue (burnout) and more, is a likely effect of heaping the children's traumatic experiences upon our own. 

To be effective, our stories must be told, must be spoken. Once healed, there is research which show as wounded healers, our own experience can make us better, more empathetic, more effective healers of others.