I Love my Job

This past week I met 7 of my casework patients and saw all my individual patients. It was fantastic! All the anxiety about what and how and to whom faded away as soon as I sat down with the people face to face and began talking. So far I'm not frightened of any of my patients, which is good because after reading some of their files I was worried how it would be to sit with them. As with the juvenile offenders, I found no connection between their crimes and my ability to establish rapport or be empathetic. A couple are making power plays, but that's to be expected in this population and especially because I am a woman. A couple are just delightful, which means I'll have to be extra cautious about my work with them.

Casework is really social work, which is not my specialty, but I'm learning the ropes in terms of services and resources as fast as I can. Thankfully some will prefer to use this time as mini-therapy sessions. I'll be setting up for my first psych eval next week too. Just getting consent to begin with, since it's a 3 day week and I don't have time to do anything more.

We had another Friday didactic and I got to know my fellow interns a bit better. They're a great group and I love the intellectual stimulation. I also learned that once can do an automatic 3 year loan deferment without cause, which changed my whole future perspective! Our institution has a loan repayment program and is increasing the number of spots next year. I can't apply until I'm licensed, so I think I might try for an informal postdoc at the local forensic mental hospital to get the more forensic training offered there (more testing and some court work) and then transfer back to the prison after I license to pay off my loans (the hosp doesn't have the repayment program). It's all just daydreams at the moment, but they're different daydreams thanks to this new info.

Nearly everything in my life is up up up, but there always has to be at least one cloud in the sky. My oldest sister is married to a terribly manipulative and abusive man. She has been cut off from the family for about 15 years, but 5 years ago she began sending holiday cards and has been gradually more in communication with us. Now suddenly her husband has gotten involved and sent a really nasty couple of letters to me, full of mixed messages and veiled threats. I had forgotten how sick and twisted their relationship really was and over the years began to doubt whether maybe I'd misinterpreted the whole situation somehow. Nope, thanks to my training I can now see it even more clearly, and it ain't pretty. As a matter of fact, the suspicion that I had all those years ago has been confirmed beyond a doubt. My BIL is not just abusive, he qualifies as a psychopath. Delightful. I can add him to the family roll of people with this nice set of mental traits. At least now though I know how to avoid being played.

Always some damned thing, isn't there? But that's ok, this really isn't new, it's just coming back around, so I'll simply set clear boundaries with him, let her know I love her and I'm here, and walk away. Life is too promising and too full of good things to dive back into this mudhole.