Death of a Therapist 2.0
The second piece of my soul
Some might say it isn’t fair to blame the job for chipping away at my soul. But its true. I don’t think you can do this job and keep your soul intact. It eats away at you one little piece at a time. Not that my soul was in great shape to begin with. I would say it was scattered to the wind long before I even sat down with my first client but the first year of my career certainly did some damage in its own right.
In Feb of 2017, I had been at my new community job for 5 months and was beginning to feel a sense of efficacy. I had started a DBT group with another fellow therapist and we had a few youth attending each week. The weekly non-violent communication group I was leading in the house actually had some kids showing up now and then. I was beginning to make connections. But as is always the case when working in community health, those connections were short lived.
I knew when the phone rang on a weekend that it couldn’t possibly be good. Work had never called me on my days off. The panic sat in my throat as I answered and the words hit me like a sledge hammer. One of the kids had been found dead in their room and I was the only therapist available to the other residents and the staff. Would I come in immediately?
Even as I drove there I felt sick to my stomach and the self doubt hijacked my mind. Was it suicide? Was it an overdose? What the hell happened? They had been doing so well, showing up to group, coming to individual sessions with me. The confusion was overwhelming. And then I thought about the staff member that had probably found them and how awful that must have been. Are they okay? What was I going to be walking into when I got there?
I saw this person’s young sweet face in my dreams and I cried for them — but it wasn’t enough. After hearing their voice over my shoulder on a hike, I picked a stone to place on an altar with prayers for them to have found peace — but it wasn’t enough. It was all I could do and it just was not enough. In this job, it never is enough.
What I walked into was pure devastation, plain and simple. Everyone was devastated. The youth catatonic. I can’t begin to describe the ripple effect of something like this in a housing program where the kids live together and are often trauma bonded in some way to begin with. The program manager was out of the country and for the next week I did my best to try and support them all. But it was futile, like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. Nothing soothed the pain.
That this was a tragedy is undeniable but as is often the case more damage came in the aftermath than in the event itself. I would wager that most of us that went through that experience together remember less about the death and more about how we would never know what happened because of the law. How the youth were not allowed to plant a tree in honor of their friend because it was looked on as “glorifying drugs and/or suicide”. How, with broken hearts, the staff made mosaic stepping stones instead to place out in the garden. Oh there was a memorial that the staff planned but I was so overwhelmed with it all I couldn’t even go. It was all just too much.
Looking back on this now I see how I just did not take care of myself. It was brushed over by the agency as if it is “just part of the job”. I got one bereavement day which I took but it wasn’t enough. I saw this person’s young sweet face in my dreams and I cried for them — but it wasn’t enough. After hearing their voice over my shoulder on a hike, I picked a stone to place on an altar with prayers for them to have found peace — but it wasn’t enough. It was all I could do and it just was not enough. In this job, it never is enough.
I write this in memorial to this beautiful young human that was longing for love and acceptance and found relief where they could. May you know the eternal love of the divine and may it fill your soul to bursting.