Hi,
I am a crisis worker and may have an interesting perspective on this subject. Not only do I work in this specific line of work (suicide prevention) but I also have spent my entire life in a state of passive suicidal ideation. I have recently obtained my therapist license. I spent my first year out of school working on a suicide/crisis hotline. And now, I currently work as a crisis worker on a mobile crisis team. We go out and engage with people who are suicidal, homicidal or experiencing psychosis or some other sort of mental health crisis. We meet with people all over the place: jails, schools, hospitals, homes, and in strange places like parking lots and grocery stores. I work with people who see trauma and crisis all day. We collaborate with law enforcement, hospital staff and other community resources to help people. All of this sounds great on paper: we try to provide support, resources and help to people who are at their most vulnerable. But the reality is that I am aware how useless and ineffective my job is. The mental health field right now does nothing to resolve people's pain, and I go to work everyday knowing that. We put people in psychiatric hospitals or send them to clinics where they get no help to resolve the actual trauma that initiated the crisis in the first place. I started following your work about 3 years ago, and I knew that one day your method for trauma resolution is going to be the way that things start to change. I just feel very conflicted because most people in this field would not see "shadow work" as an effective or safe way to treat crisis. Your work is going to be very controversial, but I honestly know that it is going to be the norm one day. I just don't know how to integrate your methods into my job at this time. I work for the county, and you have to do things a certain way to keep your job. So i have to use the tired and ineffective methods that I don't find helpful in order to stay in line. Don't get me wrong, I still think that there are some parts of crisis work that are helpful, like being able to listen and be present for people in crisis, but i'm ready for things to start changing in a big way so that we can enact long-lasting change in this field.
I really love my job. Its very fun and interesting. And I get to be there for people when they feel more alone than ever. But as someone who is chronically "over" being alive, I want to see treatment that actually works for people like me. And I would love to be apart of the wave of change that your work will bring.
-LJ
