This week, my brain did the thing it likes to do, jump from random thought to random thought, and landed on an idea for a new project. I have lots of project ideas; occasionally, some stick, but many of them remain in folders on the computer or in bags of craft supplies. I’m hoping this new idea leads to something while being cautious of the toll a new project can have on my time and energy. I’m annoyingly self-aware that throwing myself down a rabbit hole of a new idea, no matter how good it is, can be a means of distraction and avoidance of other important things.
So what is this new idea? I have been thinking about how to explain what supervision is to people who have never experienced it before and exploring “what it means to work with humans.” What does working with the complexity of human behavior and emotions do to us? How does our work change us?
In professions like counseling and social work, supervision is a requirement, and we learn about things like projection, transference, counter-transference, drama triangles, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue. But these phenomena don’t just happen in the counseling room; they happen everywhere, with all people, in our interactions at work and in everyday life.
Simple things like hearing someone use a word or phrase that takes you back to a time in your life when those words hurt you. Or taking on additional tasks or chores that others were meant to do but struggled with, and you can do it faster, then getting resentful because you end up doing everything. Or one that happens to me regularly: a stranger sits next to you on the bus and, without any prompting, tells you their trauma-heavy life story.
I spent years learning the language and frameworks around these experiences, but they still take me by surprise. So what happens if you haven’t trained in this and don’t have a structured way of working through it? What happens when the nature of your work means people regularly share their deepest secrets with you, coming to you in the most vulnerable and stressful moments of their lives? What happens when you become a pseudo-therapist without the training and support?
When I thought about this idea, the list of professions where this could occur just kept getting bigger: hairdressers, bartenders, taxi drivers, real estate agents, tattoo artists, personal trainers, and on and on.
Then I asked myself, what if I could start a conversation about this? Naturally, as I’m learning, is a very common ADHD tendency, I started thinking about starting a podcast.
Now that I’m back down to earth, I’m not quite ready to let this idea go, and I’m going to test it out a bit. Exactly what it will be, I don’t know yet, and I quite like a bit of mystery.
Let me know if you are keen to join me on the journey.
