So begins another hand of Spades at my job, as a patient informs me not to trust the patient sitting across from him. He continues to enlighten me that the second patient is a no-good snake in the grass, and the second patient responds by telling him in no uncertain terms that it is his belief that the first patient's genitals are of questionable size and effectiveness. Once again, I find myself telling both of these gentlemen to kindly shut their faces and play the game. Once again, I have averted the apocalypse- though I'm already preparing myself to do it again, as I'm fairly certain the first patient is cheating.
I'm even more certain that the second patient is on to his tricks. Three minutes later, my suspicions are verified, and I calm them down again.
This is a fairly calm night at my hospital. There've been a lot of easy nights recently; we haven't had to break up any big fights and nobody's tried to sever their fingers in a door jam. The staff and I are thankful for this lull, even though we're always half-cocked for the other shoe to drop. That comes with the territory of working at a state psychiatric hospital- you have to establish a good rapport with your clients while always being ready to dodge a punch or an errant flying chair.
People have asked me how someone can work in an environment such as this. I get the feeling that they view psychiatric hospitals as so
mething akin to, well... this:
I understand their trepidation. It is not an exaggeration that the guys I work with are quite literally too violent for other hospitals and/or too crazy for prison (though more often than not, they're just a bunch of lambs... at least, for us). But equally concerning to my companions is how I manage to deal with all their emotional baggage. And there is a lot of baggage to deal with; without a doubt, the men in my hospital have some of the worst life stories I've ever heard. So how do I keep from playing bellhop, and taking all their baggage home with me?
The answer is my litmus test for whether someone should pursue a career in mental health. There isn't anything I do to keep their issues out of my personal life; I just naturally and automatically compartmentalize work and home. I can intellectually think about their cases while I'm hanging out around the house (not that I would, but I could) without it ever effecting me. And that's not because I have any awesome command of self-discipline... I just don't give a shit about patient drama, once I leave the hospital parking lot.
Its rare for someone to start out with that capacity, especially in my field; I remember quite clearly feeling compelled to hit the bars in grad school specifically to dull the pain of what I'd heard that day in my internship. I was frequently joined by my classmates. But, you could tell the people who were "supposed" to be in the field from those who were not by who kept hitting the bar to forget after the first month or so. Those who were cut out for the field adapted, and their skin hardened on its own. Those who didn't adapt usually dropped out of school.
So, I post this not as a beating of my own drum, but as a roundabout answer to the question of "How do you deal with all that pain?".
You deal with it the way an umbrella deals with the rain. You get rained on a lot but you let it roll off of you.
And you learn to play a lot of Spades.
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