Monday, August 5, 2013

Person to professional ethics


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.

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