Many social workers I know feel guilty a good amount of the time. They are guilty when it comes to their clients, not being able to meet with them as often as they would like and feeling bad when they have to make decisions that they know their client will not understand or like. Then there is guilt in their personal lives, which include not being able to spend enough time with loved ones because of the long hours that social work entails or feeling that they are lagging with volunteering, religious, or school commitments or the mountain of laundry which has been waiting to get done for the last week.
Personally, I have felt all of these types of guilt and it weighed me down terribly. I never felt like a good enough social worker, sister, daughter or friend. I just could not measure up to the impossibly high expectations others had set for me and I had set for myself.
You will see a lot of this behaviour with new social workers or social workers entering a new type of social work field like child welfare where the demands are especially high. Everything is coming at them at once and many feel like they are drowning. Clients and management are usually not very forgiving when it comes to you not being able to stay on top of your workload. When you make seemingly stupid mistakes to them they often forget that you are new to the position, overly tired, improperly trained or just burnt out.
Supervisors often wonder why we have anxiety about facing especially abusive clients, attending court, or attending meetings where we have to defend the decisions we've made. Since we are expected to be the overseers of other people's lives it is assumed that we rarely, if ever, make mistakes, have bad days, or just generally feel insecure. Social work is often presented with certainty but rarely are decisions black and white and rarely do we have all the information needed when we have to make an important decision. We do the best with what we have and if we realise a mistake was made in hindsight we find it hard to forgive ourselves. We feel that we let our clients, members of their family, society, or supervisors down. More importantly we feel like we have failed ourselves. And of course we are going to get a talking to about the mistake afterwards.
I feel like I have come a long way as a social worker in being able to let my guilt go. Instead of ruminating over decisions I have made in the past I have learnt not to hold on to guilt. I can't see into the future and I don't know what is going to happen to all my clients one week, month or even a year from now. I have to trust that these clients will do their best and that if they need help, professionals will be available to step in and give them some assistance. I am not a perfect person and more often than not I did admit to my clients when I made a mistake. I think it shocked many of them because they had not heard a social worker admit that to them before. But we are supposed to be a team so how do you work together without honesty and forgiveness?
I have learnt to stay away from as many guilt producing social work situations as possible and that has meant changing jobs to a less pressure driven and risk prevalent atmosphere. And people have noticed a difference in me. I am calmer and I more honest about respecting my needs and boundaries. But in no way did I I do this on my own. I had support who reminded me when I was in a guilt or anxiety trap and it helped me to realise that I needed to let go and move on in my life.
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