An antidote to suffering; loving kindness for social workers

Hey fellow social worker:

I often write about social workers engaging in self care practices and work in order to remain healthy and stable in the field.  Social work is a hard profession due to a variety of issues; being emotionally present for pain and trauma, trying to regulate our own nervous systems given the constant flow of input data, and the physical toll the job can take on many of us.  Another component of our work is maintaining a healthy perspective of humanity and people in general.  As social workers, we often see a small slice of humanity and often it is people living in their worst moments.  We can forget this is a just a slice and seeing pain on a daily basis can really change the way we see people in all their strengths and resilience. 

Invitation:

One way to maintain our perspective and the humanity of others is to learn and make a part of our practice the use of loving kindness. Loving kindness is a way to share in the common humanity of people.  It helps us to center the dignity and worth of the person in our practice.  This centering helps us to not only send out love through universal energy or awareness to others but to have it reflected back to ourselves.

Let’s discuss how:

To use this practice, people often will start with short sayings or mantras such as “May you have peace,”  “May you be healthy” and “May you be safe.”  Those who teach this practice, often encourage the practitioner to start with a more neutral person or experience and work backwards to someone we love and cherish and even further back to someone we find more difficult or hard to work with, live with or be in a relationship with in our lives.  This practice can take a few moments using the breath to help center us and then vocalizing these statements in our head or out loud.  Many times a loving kindness practice can last for a few minutes in order to get that grounded sense of community and humanity. 

Why loving kindness:

This practice for social workers can help us to know peace in our work and in the areas in our lives where we struggle to have kindness for ourselves. Social workers struggle with perfectionism, excessive caretaking of others and being driven to work harder and do extra for our clients who are struggling. Often our inner critic will show up and beat us up for missing something with a client, making a mistake or even not being able to help everyone we perceive as needing our assistance. 

What else about loving kindness:

When we practice loving kindness for ourselves, it can open up more space for our work for our clients because we are not beating ourselves up internally and we can also model this experience for clients by teaching or sharing our practice of loving kindness. We can help show our clients that being kind to themselves is okay and does not make them weak or even silly.  We can show that kindness of ourselves helps us have more space and compassion for ourselves which also allows us to have more space for others.  

My experience:

I have been practicing loving kindness for a short time but I have found it to be a real antidote against suffering caused by myself and the suffering experienced by others.  It helps to center me in knowing and understanding the humanity of all people, even those I don't like or struggle to understand their viewpoints or beliefs.  It also helps me to see that people are people and most of people who are displaying hate, anger or rage are often working from a hurt place.  We are all people trying our best in a world that is not easy and often has deep amounts of suffering. 

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