rjmarek's blog

I am the son of Freud and Marsha Linehan theoretical and clinical orientation.

Freud for his awareness of neurosis, trauma, dreams and sexuality. Marsha Linehan gave me a new start on life. She completed Freud in self disclosure, gave the client and therapist independent life.

My work will bring what both missed in the western world, the impact of clinical poverty.

Social Work is the human response to unrestrained greed and domination of the sociopath. Where the sociopath divides and detracts from living, the social worker is committed to joining with his fellow creatures in unpredictable ways that are demonstrations of interest and caring.

As social worker we help clients. If we help clients improve, then there will be results. if there are results there will be numbers attached to the results. How do we keep track of the results in a way that can be tabulated and meaningful for clinical use, not primarily research academia, but for clinicians to use directly. Evidence based and clinician friendly, "efficacy and utility" from the American Psychological Association Statement, 2005, Policy Statement on Evidence-Based Practice in Psychology.

Modern Social Work, at least in micro practice, was founded on psychodynamic principles. Social work is more than that, analysis and talk therapy. The underpinning of social work is advancement of client independence by paradoxically making the client more involved in community. Our work as Social Workers always has that paradox. Self advocacy means meeting one's needs and community means having a group of supportive people who may or may not be blood related.

Throughout the last four years my practice has been to make the financial intervention as a gift that does not have to be returned. Largely, I have avoided loaning money. When clients are loaned money it appears the immediate nervousness about the financial need is diminished but anxiety returns in the form of a nagging feeling often expressed as, "I can pay this back on the first," or, some date in the near future. The money has been returned, gratitude expressed but no lesson or capacity has been learned.

We have ideas of #justice. It inflames us when people are hurt and these same people should easily be spared that hurt. There is little agreement what justice means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice. When I see calls for justice, I think, to whose benefit?

Another buzzword, is Human Rights the current buzzword?

After 30 years in the field, working with families in nursing homes, a pediatric nursing home, home visits, school SW and private practice, after reading about the history of charitable giving, philanthropy, visiting workers and COS, and looking back at what I originally learned in school, I tentatively offer this view of a Social Worker:

Lack of freedom of thought. Inability to make plans. Lack of freedom. Fear.
Chronic.

By huge amount is 10% of debt owed. This amount can be squandered, can be utilized for needed purposes or can be used to get out of debt.

The economic fallacy of the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is that the money that saved Tiny Tim was generated by Scrooge's business acumen. Everybody likes money to spend.

Society is made up of individuals sharing interest and conversing.
Social Work helps and restores the individual to society.

I regularly distribute a synopsis of the Wim Hof method with instructions to observe the podcast of Joe Rogan in which Wim Hof demonstrates a simplified technique. The first podcast interview is most valuable to the beginner.

The first stage I teach is mastering the breathing technique. This stage has two parts as described above.

The second stage involves turning the concentration onto various parts of the body.

After this happens, the next stage is we focus outside our minds on people and events in our lives.

There is a reluctance of certain professionals in the mental health field to carefully consider the diagnosis of ASD as it applies to the individual under their care. With the diagnosis of ADHD or ADD, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder or Attention Deficit Disorder, there are drugs that can be prescribed that rule in or rule out the disorder. As prescribers note, if the medication works, then the child or adult has ADD/ADHD. With a diagnosis of ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, there is no clear medication regimen for the alleviation of ASD specifically.

Two benefits of not seeking reimbursement in the therapeutic intervention associated with Carefulgiving.org.

(1) The therapist is kept aware of the independence factor since the clients will eventually find ways of sustaining themselves.
(2) This practice eliminates the debt trap that the clients are already in.

Giving money to clients in need is frowned upon because of two reasons. First, there are dangers of making the situation worse for the individual. This happens naturally during the power imbalance of therapy (mental health treatment) with some individuals. Dependent personality clients can easily misconstrue the financial intervention as validation of their inability to deal effectually with the world at large. The second reason flows from improper financial training of the social worker.

Much needs to be said on government, handouts and poverty. People who have access to flat screens and smart phones are not actually destitute, or in 'poverty', they have food and shelter.

SNAP program is not a failure because people abuse it. Many pharmaceuticals are abused but are still useful.

I just realized the title could be applied to the growth in a client as well as to the growth in clinicians to be effective and therapeutic when they give money in the context of therapy. I shall talk about the growth of expertise in the clinician.

The growth seems to have been a maturation in authority in the clinician. In the beginning, money was given with trepidation and relied on the arms length strategy of appealing to the board to make the donation.

As medicine is developed in the laboratory, by observation in real life and by love or money, so I as a social worker must understand how money works in the collective and the individual. The macro, group, and individual are affected differently by the influx and expenditure of money as well as the need for it.

The government divides money into M1 and M2. Investment deals with astronomical sums, and people die for lack of what some of these people spend in a fraction of a minute.

I just started Common Factors in Couples and Family Therapy (Sprenkle, 2009) and found myself being nourished by the paradigm shift from a techniques specific treatment approach to a client perceived and interpreted collaboration unpredictable to the clinician. The author insists psychological theory is important as the vehicle of delivery of treatment, possibly keeping the therapist focused and honest.

People need financial education. Most of us could learn to be better financiers. But our clients' errors are deficits in being able to save, plan ahead, and not over commit to expenses that last more than a few months. These are the mistakes early learners consistently make. Learning to be wise takes experience and education. Being able to make these mistakes is a feature of basic income allowance that has not been acknowledged, except to say income is given without constraints.

Anxiety is found, at least in mammals, as a condition initiated and sustained by memories. Temple Grandin of autistic fame noted that cattle demonstrate anxiety in a widely dispersed spectrum in each herd. She correlated her impressions with anecdotal evidence from many cattle ranchers and farmers throughout her career. She summarized her findings: anxiety makes the animal (and I presume, humanity) more intelligent by making them more susceptible to stimulation, especially novel stimulation.

Of the many crises in our lives, financial insufficiency is one of the worst. People have committed suicide over job loss, people steal and kill for want of money, and, very often we live in a perpetual state of worry over unpaid bills.

Giving a person what they need is the oxygen of freedom coupled with unconditional positive regard of the therapist. This starts the process of humanity in their lives. Can one see past trauma? Trauma implies "no way out."

We had Casework. This was work.
Now we have The Great Quests - all social commitments.

In the beginning there was visiting charity workers. These good people tried to life the spirits and inform their clients' choices. Professionalism came gradually.

This article addresses PTSD as a factor affecting the quality of a relationship: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mB8AXrSZJxcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA19&...

https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2015/oct/20/why-pretend-...

Moribund Ants Leave Their Nests to Die in Social Isolation

The analogy from the above article demonstrates that ants who would otherwise die if they left the nest after injury (progressing to dying is apoptotic behavior) but, if instead, were forced to remain in the nest recovered their health.

Our function as social workers is to improve the well being of our clients in a social context. (NASW Code)

The use of cannabis has become more open among our clients.
The research is specious regarding cannabis as a cause of loss of motivation.

Cannabis does not necessarily cause loss of motivation but it does cause a decrease of dopamine in some people
-the study focused on patients who had experienced a psychotic break while using marijuana and were long term users-
these patients experienced a decrease in dopamine. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amotivational_syndrome.

Understanding CGC's role in therapy
1. Justification for CGC's existence. Borrowing an idea from Jennifer Sherman's book, Those who work, those who don't (p.77). In crisis, family supplies economic capital that allows their family member to avoid the crisis and the family member is able to build moral capital, that is, respectability in a community: self reliance, contentment with their life, and self-sustainment. For social workers, this is the value of accessing CarefulGiving for clients; the clinician becomes family to a client where there is no healthy family.

I am looking for poverty statistics that

Show loss of initiative is predictive of population predation: