The last post I made was a while back, written at the end of four years as a social worker. Since then, I’ve gotten another job, doing more or less the same thing, working with people in recovery. The job so far hasn’t been too bad, in the sense that I know what I am doing, and I find myself almost questioning if I have even changed jobs at all. Partly this is because I am working remotely, and many of the same platforms I used at my last job exist here, partly it is because the nature of this work is a kind of Sisyphean cycle.
If you’re in recovery, or know someone who is, or have seen bad movies try to portray recovery, you’ll know what I mean. 12-step meetings have a language and structure full of code words, euphemisms, metaphors, similes, and the like that cover almost any conversation around recovery. Personally, (and no disrespect to those who attend), I’ve never dug 12-step meetings. They’re too full of assumptions about how the world works and how people work, too full of what charitibly can be called overtly protestant Christianity, and a bit too strict in terms of what recovery can even be.
Nonetheless, I work for people, and with people who navigate those worlds, I read charts, listen to stories, and do my best to be fully present. Still, the stories do tend to blur, and by this I don’t mean that I forget names and stories at the moment (which would be a sign that I need to stop doing this work) but rather that the days taken as a whole start to feel like a cycle.
This is instructive in a way, though. The fact that things repeat is often seen by those in care work of any kind as a sort of proof that people can’t change. The cynicism of workers in care work is often gross, a kind of dehumanization. For me, it is mainly proof that it is the systems that have to change. This is not to remove agency from people, but rather to help them regain it. Often, we will speak about topics, and many people in recovery come up with similar gripes, things about how they’re grateful for recovery, but life is still fucking HARD.
We are (those of us in recovery) supposed to be grateful in a sense for how hard life can be, as we may not have been active participants in our lives before. But I see this self-reflection from people about how their life is hard but they are grateful; less a beautiful picture of how the human spirit can overcome, and more like a coping mechanism. This isn’t to lay blame on people; coping mechanisms have, in the colloquial sense, a bad rap. But what they are at their core is an adaptation to the world, in order that one can survive. Being proud of that, or grateful, is a good thing, but where it starts to feel strange is how we are told essentially, “Hey, could be worse!”
I could go on about how these systems (i.e., capitalism) are at the root of the issue, and maybe I would be preaching to the choir. I could also speak about how, when working, I often want to yell that people shouldn't be so hard on themselves because, despite their feelings of not being worthy due to their recovery, they are worthy. (Even, to be clear, if they’re not abstinent and actively using substances).
But I also guess what I am thinking about is the repetitive nature of work, any work for sure, but especially recovery-type work. How we are all victims of a cycle, how we all feel like our jobs are repeating over and over again. How this can make us feel isolated and lonely (even if your job involves speaking to people all the time). I am glad to have a job again, and to not be restless at night wondering if my unemployment will last, but I am still confused by our inability to imagine a life outside of this. Part of this is time, to be sure, how can we while working full time, or worrying about bills, taking care of family, friends, trying to be creative or playful. I hope, as always, that we can come together more, that we can find other ways of interacting with each other, and that recovery can break out of this weird paradigm of being something static, and instead become an active and dynamic process by which we can meet each other, embrace, and laugh.
A lot of this comes down to the language written and used around recovery. The affirmations, while great as a way to reframe things, often can feel like I am helping people to ignore material conditions. Telling someone they have a positive outlook when they are faced with situations ultimately out of their control, and realistically caused by capitalism, feels disgusting at times. Sure, people often do this on their own, and I’m not saying that reframing isn’t useful (I have worked on this in my own life/recovery), but often things like motivational interviewing ( a therapeutic technique used to get people to open up) can feel like an ouroboros.
Speaking about things can bring clarity, and in particular, it can be helpful when we are caught in cyclic thought patterns to discuss them, even if just to take them from the subjective to the more objective realm. Communication is, after all, what makes us social creatures.
I just wish when encouraging it, I could also encourage people to become more explicitly anti-capitalist.
"The affirmations, while great as a way to reframe things, often can feel like I am helping people to ignore material conditions. Telling someone they have a positive outlook when they are faced with situations ultimately out of their control, and realistically caused by capitalism, feels disgusting at times."
Thanks for writing this. From a former care worker to a current one, this is a meaningful essay about the ways in which capitalism makes care an uphill battle, always. You learn to measure success differently, and it really fucking sucks sometimes. But it matters to do the work even when the system is absolute shit. A lot of care workers get bitter, and it's hard not to. But it's such rewarding work that punishes anyone who wants to do it. Total paradox. Great essay.