Describing in written words who I am as a
person in ethical terms is a difficult concept.
Do I share what I believe, what I have observed, what I have experienced,
or what others have said I am. Do I use
the code of ethics to which I am held on a professional level or do I share the
ethical standards I have in my own personal life. I believe in order to introduce my self in
ethical terms means I have to address me from all the above stated view points
and not in a singular format. Who I am as a helper is intertwined with who I am
as a human being.
According to my personal belief system, my
ethics are my morals and values. I tend to believe in general that there is
right and wrong choice. I believe that actions can make a person “bad” or
“good”. I value helping others make
‘right’ choices. I believe it is morally unjust to watch others suffer as I
value others lives and the well being of others.
My mother likes to tell people that from a
small age my moral compass was strong. She shares many stories with my friends
saying that these were just signs pointing to my future choices in schooling
and for career. I would agree on some
levels. When I was about five years old
I remember feeling a deep sense of compassion for others. I had a friend who had difficulty not peeing
the bed at night. Every night this happened this friend would get brutally
punished by their parents. They would either have to eat soap, be spanked, or
lay in their pee for a few hours. I remember feeling angry about this. One day
I was playing at this friend’s house.
Their parents found out they had peed their bed so they made them go
back to bed and lay in their urine. I had a deep sense of sadness and
anger. According to my mom I began
screaming at them. My mom says I told them what a bad mom and dad they were and
that I would pee on them. All I remember is that after this day I was no longer
allowed at this friend’s house. This example is how I felt I should start, with
acknowledging that my sense of a person and what’s right and wrong began even
before I truly understood what it meant to help others.
I value others feelings of safety. Growing
up my world was unsure. I was born to a teen mother. My mother always struggled
financially, I had not father figure growing up, and lived in section 8 housing
while eating food provided by food banks or food stamps. I wanted to change my world growing up. I
wanted to be able to play on sports teams or have a tree to climb and a yard to
roam in. I didn’t have the opportunity to experience those things. At some
point I began to believe that in order to change it for myself I must change it
for others. As a teen I would participate in fundraisers for food banks and
donation drives for children who were in need of clothing.
Even
though my family had very little, my mother was very giving. At thanks giving she would make a few dozen
cookies. She would cut up paper and have my sister and I draw designs or what
ever we wanted on these papers. She would use these papers as “thinking about
you cards”. We would take these cookies
and cards to Seattle and walk around and handing them out to the individuals who
we saw experiencing homelessness. I believe this experience was powerful for
me. Every thanksgiving I still go out
and hand out cookies and cards to individuals whom are living on the streets. I
believe that even when I don’t have much, I have something to share and to give
to others who have less than I do.
I
believe that I have always had a deep sense of empathy and compassion for
others. My sense of being kind to others
is deeply tied to how I see myself as a helper.
This is what motivates me as a professional. They are not separate for me.
I work as a youth chemical dependency
counselor. My job with them is to help them to meet goals they set for
themselves. I get to experience with them ways they can change their
lives. I see their struggles and I see
their successes. It is both a difficult and rewarding job. Working with these youth I see what can be
fixed in the community. I become knowledgeable to what gaps exist in services
and I see what can be improved. The ability to gain this knowledge is linked to
my belief that I must change things for others. Here is a list of some what the
young people I work with experience: hunger, homelessness, aging out of care,
and human trafficking. I am hopeful that even though I can’t fix what has
happened I perhaps can make an impact that will prevent it from happening to
the future youth I will work with.
When I leave work however I don’t turn off
the fact that I am a helper. I still participate in advocacy for those who are
less fortunate. My desire to find a way to help others and advocate for others
has motivated me to go to school so that I could learn the tools to effectively
help. I am in the process of my journey to getting my Masters of Social Work.
My hope is to be able to continue to learn how to help individuals who
struggle.
My biases as a helper are many. My
professional career has helped me to become what I consider a better, less
judgmental human being. During my
childhood I was exposed to many things that encouraged my becoming a helper, but
also built with in me a large sense of what I deemed “bad” people. It wasn’t until after I began my schooling
for my MSW that I began to understand how to see people as individuals and how
to see each individual in their environment and how these experiences can make
recovery difficult. During the beginning of my degree I took a diversity
course. The professor asked me if I had any biases, naively I said I had no
biases. She helped me to identify some of these.
My mother for the first 8 years of my life
had a problem with drinking. She would date men whom also struggled with
similar problems. I remember parties in our home; I remember her experiencing
the comedowns, and her moods. I once
found a needle with my sister, she picked up poked herself on accident. We went
to the ER. She ended up being fine. At 8, my mom met a sober female. This woman motivated her and challenged her.
My mom got sober and began raising my sister and I with the idea that a person
can have fun with out using drugs or alcohol.
To this day both my sister and I have never used drugs or drank
alcohol. Unsure if it was all the scary
things we were both exposed to that has motivated us to not use, or if it was
how she raised us after she became sober.
The sobriety that seemed to happen so
quickly and for my mother has set a par in my head. I know her life wasn’t
easy, yet she decided to do something very hard. Before I became a chemical
dependency counselor I struggled to understand people who had difficulty
getting and staying clean. It bothered me that people would seemingly choose
drugs or alcohol over their families. I
did not have a full understanding of the disease that is addiction.
My personal ethics has gotten in the way of
my professional ethics and vice versa. I feel this has made me grow as an
individual. For example one of my core belief
systems is to believe there is a right and wrong choice. I used to honestly believe I ‘knew’ the right
choice that should be made. I find the idea that I ever felt this or thought
this to be completely absurd now. I
still feel deeply that there is a right and a wrong choice. However I
understand know that the right or wrong choice is for each individual to make.
There is no way as a person or a counselor I could ever make a choice that
would work in another individual’s life. Only the person experiencing the
problem truly understands what is best in their life.
Another bias I discovered I have was that I
believe that all people who are in services want help. As a person who is
compassionate and empathetic and sees where people are struggling I often
assume all people want help overcoming these struggles. Often in the field of
chemical dependency counseling this is not the case. Often they are required to
be there and they don’t want help with quitting. With my youth they often want help to get
back in school, get their parents off their back, or get off of probation. In
my experience very seldom do I come across a youth who is there to get help
quitting substance use. Most of the clients I have worked with plan on successfully
accomplishing completing the program I work in and they believe once they have
got their parents trust back, back into school, or off probation, they can go
back to using. In a way they want help accomplishing how to do this, but they
don’t want help quitting substance use.
I believe that looking at who I am ethically
will continue to change as I learn more through out my schooling. I believe it
will continue to change as I learn from my clients, other professionals, and
even through my own experiences. I do
think at my core will always be the compassion for others, but the way in which
this drives my helping may change as I continue to grow as a person.
