My Emotions of Change

Last week I got a job.
Not just any job, but a cherry job.
And I got this job after being out of my field for over eighteen years!

So, after you congratulate me and feel happy for me, let me tell you how completely life-changing it has already been to be hired by this agency.

The first moment after getting the call offering me the job, I fell backwards onto my bed and danced around and felt overwhelmed in my head, like my brain was nothing but white light. A moment later I heard my husband get my message to him about it because he (working down stairs) swiped his door aside and climbed the stairs and ran down the hallway to me, finding me on my back on the bed kicking my feet in the air and laughing!  lol  😆


A few days later I nervously, and weirdly dreamlike, drove the twenty minutes down the highway to the office and attended a few group activities with clients (I'm a clinical social worker). I fell into the groups naturally and felt right at home with the interactions with clients around the table. I had a few initial moments of disbelief and white light in the head again, then a happy abandon at being a clinician in a nice agency.

I don't usually post
pics of myself,
but this is me
my first moments
at work.
☺️

Today, a bit over a week later, after reading and researching and accessing about two hundred pages of information and training and watching clinical videos, I'm sitting here at my desk in happy tears.

I'm genuinely grateful for this job. It has already changed me. I feel like this job is an opportunity for human growth and professional growth that I've never actually experienced before and that I hadn't expected at this point in my life. I see this agency and its practice framework as a truly effective and healing and coping framework for people who have had little hope before. And, the more I learn about it, the more thrilled I am that the owner of the agency saw something in me, something that made him want to offer me this job in spite of my many shortfalls.


I'll be learning a framework for practice called DBT*; DBT stands for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. It's a treatment approach that has been around in the counseling and mental health world for about twenty-five years. In fact, I was there, initially, when it came out and when the mental health agency that I worked for was first introduced to the concepts of DBT back in the 1993. 

We were shown Marcia Linehan's red and black book entitled Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. I remember the reception that these new concepts from Linehan's book received in that agency at that time. I remember the resistance in some of the clinicians in learning DBT and I recall a few of the clinicians sounding hopeful about learning DBT to help some of the most difficult-to-treat clients. My first observations of the agency that I worked for at that time and their response to the new DBT ideas as skeptical and kind of laughing at it.

Today, I'm sitting here learning so much about DBT and feeling so very comfortable and hopeful with it. Being the parent of a child with very strong emotions, I discover that, over the years, I have been practicing some aspects of DBT just by instinct, and some by practice. 

Mostly, I want to celebrate this moment in my life.
I feel that I'm embarking on an amazing journey.

I want to remember this moment.
At this moment I am exquisitely aware of the steep, steep learning curve that I am facing with this new job. From learning the framework, to getting registered on the insurance panels for clients, to learning all of the internal parts of the agency, to figuring out exactly how to wear make up on this way-older face, I'm actually nervous af about some of this. But I know that I can manage some of these hurdles**, and get to the good part.
I have already learned so. Darn. Much. And that's just the start.


* I will explain DBT in a different post and I will link that post here but there are tons of pages to check out online if you are curious or interested.  ☺️

** Like finding the right lipstick shade...

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