A Different Sort of Fasting
“Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; Hold fast; Hold out. Patience is genius”. Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon 1707-1788, French Naturalist 
“To fast does not mean to go without but to become empty and in so doing open oneself.” Gretel Ehrlich, Wyoming rancher, naturalist and author.
This enforced “employment fast” is allowing me to regain some perspective. My last three experiences in Mental Health in New Mexico left a bad taste in my mouth. I know now, with the help of some friends, through conversation and emails, that I cannot really get back into the life of small agency work. I think it is an issue of getting caught up in helping others to build their dreams, and, in the process losing my own. In this process, all too often, what I have run into are environments where the real work, the clinical and healing work, gets lost.
The first agency I worked at here was run by a man with great political ambitions. He got himself elected to the school board while maintaining his position as the Executive Director of the mental health agency which was overseeing the mental health care of the local children. He eventually had to resign because his role on the Board of Education became such an obvious conflict of interest. Now, I hear he is thinking about running for mayor. His management style involved daily yelling and screaming in the hallways at his employees. Clients found that their mental health care was rationed because of the director’s financial concerns and his need to look good to the state agencies and the third party payers – the appearance of things – was more important than the actual care of people. It was a brutal place to work, an even more brutal place to receive care. I understand it remains so, with a high turn over of clinicians and employees and complaints from the community about the quality of care. This agency has created an atmosphere in this town in which, “the people of the town no longer believe in mental health as something that really works or helps,” to quote a friend.
The second agency had my heart and too much of my soul. It was not as political but was dominated by a pattern of unethical conduct and inappropriate boundaries by staff and the Executive Director which in fact hurt the boys more often than they were helped. I almost had a nervous breakdown simply trying to create a safe, ethical environment for the care of these boys. Looking back, after I was told I had the power to close the place, I realize I should have. Instead I allowed my love for the boys to turned a blind eye to a great many things, too many things. I think I did not want to take the responsibility for being the one to pull the plug. My bad.
In the third, I took God’s lesson from the second to heart. I did contact the licensing board with my concerns. Yesterday, I received a nice email form the CYFD attorney in Roswell. She told me that my letter of concern was well received, that it triggered an investigation about the lack of clinical compliance in the care of the foster children. Kathryn pointed out that even though all these experiences have been a difficult thing for me, even in the broken-ness of them I am making a good and great difference in the quality of people’s lives. In each of these instances, too, I know from my clinical training that the agenices reflected the pathology of the Directors, just as the great psychiatrist and family system theorist, Murray Bowen said agency systems do.
I needed the email from Roswell too after reading this last week Frank Waters memoirs about Taos. He wrote about the semi famous and celebrity culture of Taos in the middle of the 1900’s. I should never read stuff like that because it always leaves me feeling that somehow I failed or I am inadequate, sort of like commercial television does to me as well. Mostly this feeling goes back to not really having made peace with the fact that I chose a path other than art. In my youth I had poetry published, art work praised and I turned away. I always felt badly about that. I have discussed the reasons in these journals and don’t need to rehash them. I do know I need to make peace with it.
In front of me lies a typed statement of what I want my life to look like. I keep it at the base of my computer screen as a reminder of where I want to be in two years. I reads like this –
“By the time I am sixty, Kathryn and I have a small ranch/farm in the Rocky Mountains close to clear streams full of trout and I fly fish on a regular basis. The streams are lined with Cottonwoods, willows and tall pines. We have horses that I use in my work. I have a pottery studio with a kick wheel and kiln where I create pottery. I write almost every day. I work part time in mental health and have an on-call job in emergency management. Kathryn continues to work teaching people about nature and she writes children’s books. These things come into our lives because we have faith and know that if we do our part, God will bless us with these things. He would not put them in our soul otherwise.”
I have discovered that writing as an end in itself is not really what I am about. Don’t get me wrong. I love to write but writing is more an issue of expressing something about my life and simply writing for its own sake, it cannot be about money or being published. Only to write for money or to be published would be as unbalanced for me as only to do psychotherapy for money. I have lived too long with that imbalance. I do not want to re-enter into it.
Other than the setting I outlined above, I see three things which I have to work at during this fast to create balance in my life.
1) Working with horses
2) Continuing my work as a healer
a) as a psychotherapist
b) in emergency services
3) Being a creative artist with a small “a” not with a capital “A”
2) Continuing my work as a healer
a) as a psychotherapist
b) in emergency services
3) Being a creative artist with a small “a” not with a capital “A”
This enforced employment “fast” is allowing me to “reboot” and re-focus on putting these things in perspective and in motion.
To address the first thing on the list, I am considering starting an Equine Assisted Psychotherapy program.
I know that such a program would reflect my own pathology, just as the pathology of the Director’s of the agencies I worked for here in New Mexico was reflected in the structure of what they were doing. Hopefully, I am not as driven by a “will to power,” or “pathological secretiveness resulting from unresolved childhood sexual abuse and family alcoholism” or “issues related to attachment disorders as a result of being in foster care as a child,” as they were.
I know my greatest pathology is that I have the soul of a cowboy and simply want to be left alone to do the work I do. I know I am pathologically honest. (Yes, I am discovering that one can be too honest but it is something I cannot stop myself from doing, it is part of what makes me gifted as a therapist). I also know that I think out loud, either verbally or in writing, and that often gets me into trouble since most people are not that fond of what I am thinking. Without a doubt I am opinionated, at least until new evidence comes to me which allows me to change my view. And I love money too much, placing too much of my security in its regular flow. I too readily forget that if one does what one loves, the money follows.
I suspect that if I were to take on the endeavor of doing therapy with horses that I would have to make peace with the idea of the National Equine Psychotherapy governing association (EAGALA) as well as CYFD and their over kill of paper work. I am having to give a great deal of thought to this. Being at heart a cowboy in the finest sense of the word might make this endeavor more difficult than I want.
There is good reason for such a program however. Adele and Marlena McCormick, two of the earliest clinicians to use horses in therapy put it this way.
“Our goal was to help people go beyond where conventional therapies often leave them. For some, conventional therapy doesn’t work at all. Others manage, through much hard work, to develop greater awareness of their problems but fail to construct a new life or enhance their present one. It’s like spending endless hours preparing the soil for a vegetable garden and neglecting to plant the seeds. Without working though the last critical phase, they’re likely to revert to habitual behaviors. It’s also true that people today have begun to tire of therapy. They’re burnt out on the jargon, the predictable lines of investigation, not to mention the time and expense that must be invested. We wanted the people with whom we worked to experience not just better functioning but joy in their lives. We wanted to get them to live life rather than to dissect it ad nauseam.”
I know from years of working in an office as a therapist that the worst way to help children and adolescents change is to have them sit in an office and talk. That is probably true for adults too.
I also realized I have found a way possibly to enter into on call work with FEMA which has been a goal since the late 1990’s. New Mexico has a task force, USAR-NM-TF-1 which responds as needed to national emergencies and actually pays one for one’s efforts. So I am looking into signing into that as well. Local SAR simply has been too unprofessional and cliquish for my satisfaction. I, as well as some others, have simply pulled back on our involvement and left it to the “caver’s clique” which has taken over the runing of it. So I will have to see where this new direction takes me, if it opens up. I am also taking this time to redo my wild land fire courses and become active again with the local fire service.
The “art” part is the greatest challenge to me. I am making peace with simply writing for joy. I also need to start going to the pottery studio here. Why I have not done so I guess is a reflection of my pathology as well, a fear of failure once again. Yet I know that the only failure is when one either does not do it or measures one’s self by the opinions of others. Doing it for the love of it, like I did in High school, is really the answer – not the publishing or the exhibiting but the doing it for joy. Doing it with a “beginners mind,” not expecting great things and accepting that I really don’t know what in the heck I am doing artistically any more is OK.
Adele and Marlena McCormick are correct, one should live life to “experience not just better functioning but joy in their lives . . . to live life rather than to dissect it ad nauseam.”
So today I end with that thought. Time to put down the dissecting knife. Now, I have furniture to move, a horse to play with, a dog to train before he completely loses his mind and makes me loose mine and simple joy to experience while life sorts itself out.
In His Service. (I have got to remember that too!)
Earth, Hearth, Home 