Dear Social worker, welcome back to the world's number one
personal development podcast. For social workers, skill alone
isn't enough. Building your character is what
sustains careers in social work. I'm Lisa Ram, a social worker
turned full time entrepreneur at socialworkcoachinghub.com.
And what a summer we've had. While I can't reduce your
caseload, I can help you level up your career with practical
tools, leadership strategies and tips to build resilience and
keep pushing through everyday challenges.
This is real talk. From one social worker to
another, empowering your personal growth.
You're exactly where you need to be.
Let's talk. We are back.
We had a summer break and now we are back.
It is dark still at 7:00 AM in the mornings now.
So you know we are approaching the C word that is Christmas.
I hope you've had a lovely summer break and my apologies
because I didn't get round to actually saying to you I was
having a couple of months break. So I will work on that.
I'll reflect on that and next year we'll make sure that you
are aware of what is happening. However, if you follow me on
social media, you will know that I've been on holiday and that I
was preparing and hosting the Black and Diverse Safeguarding
Professionals Conference, which is the only conference here in
the UK for the global majority and allies alike.
And it was fantastic. Over 30 speakers, 19 workshops,
we had some good food, great networking.
It was a Saturday afternoon, great venue.
It was it was a chef's kiss and I'm just so pleased that all
went well. So thank you to everyone who
joins us. If you've never joined us, where
have you been? Go to lisaranedwards.com, that's
LESIRAN, that's Lisa Ran edwards.com/BD SC and you will
get all the updates there ready for next year.
We want to see you if you haven't been there.
What a summer. Oh my goodness, it feels so good
to be back, to be speaking to you all.
But what a summer. It came, it went, we had great
summer days and now we are back. And this week we are going to be
talking about reclaiming yourself.
Is that time of year where the dark morning setting, the
earlier dark evening setting and you're beginning to feel the
effects of the change of the weather.
And also if you like me, you start reflecting what did I
achieve this year? What am I doing next year?
How am I progressing next year? So this episode is motivating
you to reclaim yourself and finding yourself beyond the
social work role. I have coached hundreds of
social workers this year and I've trained hundreds of social
workers this year. If you didn't know, I do anti
racism training and trauma informed self-care training
along some others. Go to lisaandedwards.com you'll
find out information there and I've sold lots of books this
year as well. Lots of people have been buying
books. So if you didn't know, I write
the Social Work Practice and well-being Planner and the
self-care Journal for Social workers.
If you go to any of my social medias, Lisa Ann Edwards, you
will find a link to that or just message me. e-mail
info@socialworkcoachinghub.com if you want to find out more
about the planners simply helping you get through your
everyday life. It's a holistic planner which
incorporates personal, well-being, organizational, and
your everyday professional life in one planner.
I've found it incredibly useful. So let's talk about what happens
when the social work role starts to take over, start to takes
over your mind. It becomes your identity to the
core, and somehow, somewhere along the line, you begin to
lose sight of you. I want us to pause today,
reclaiming time, reclaiming headspace, and just remembering
that you are not your caseload. The quote I want to share with
you today is from Henry David Theroux.
I've no idea who he is. Sorry guys, but I found this
quote and it really spoke to me. I was like, I've got to share
this. Not until we are lost do we
begin to understand ourselves. I'll tell you something, it's an
interesting journey getting lost.
Even that story is in the Bible. Or the prodigal son where he
leaves and flies the nest to go partying, getting involved in
all kinds of things, ends up destitute, homeless, hungry.
And you know, his father goes out to search for him and leaves
the good son, the brother, the one that was behaving himself
and being obedient behind to go and find the last son.
And he brings the son back and welcomes him back and says come
home son, we're all he again. Found him the fattest feast they
could find. And be mindful of vegans and
vegetarians here. And there is something about
being lost and you coming back home, coming back to yourself
and finding yourself whilst in the wilderness.
It's almost like getting your head straight.
I don't know if any of you guys watch or are on TikTok.
I'm on TikTok and I see posts where the audio track is someone
walking and swearing in the background.
And the idea is, is that someone is going for a leisurely walk or
going for their morning walk. But the thoughts in your head
are all the things you thought you should have said, could have
said, would have said. And in the midst of all that,
you've got all this swearing going on.
If you ever get to see it, you do chuckle because whilst you're
out there having these thoughts, whilst you're lost, whilst
you're trying to figure it out, somehow you find your way back
to yourself within all the mire and with all within all the
chaos. And I believe in social work, we
have the capability of doing that.
But in order to make that happen, we've got to pause.
So my question to you is, have you ever looked up from your
work and realised you've been running on autopilot?
That your thoughts, your confidence, even your sense of
you feel buried somewhere under the weight of what's next?
This episode is going to form the part of you that is still
trying to breathe beneath the roll.
Now often my coaching clients say to me, I'm so pleased I've
decided to invest in coaching because this is time and space
for me. The amount of times I hear that
because people have the opportunity to 100%
unconditionally in a non judgmental safe space be
themselves. So we have to learn to ask
ourselves these questions when we're in the role of a social
worker. We're knee deep.
We're in October now, and remembering that some of the
vicarious trauma you're experiencing doesn't belong to
you in your mind. We have to find a way to
parallel process. Being compassionate alongside
protecting yourself now. I learned that simply just
trying to take control isn't about doing more, because by
doing more, you're losing yourself.
What I used to do personally, when I felt like I was losing
myself in the role, I would decide to create a season.
So I'll be like for the this two weeks, I'm going to get my head
down. I'm going to work all the hours
that I think are necessary to get my work where I think it
needs to be my paperwork. Generally speaking, now you may
be in that season or you may be thinking every day is just so
relentless, but you have the control to decide how you want
to manage it. Are you going to take up the
work for a season, couple of weeks, 3 weeks and focus on
that? Or are you going to have a
conversation with your manager, try and get some support?
Are you going to make sure that you phone that friend that you
said you meant to phone or go out?
That time you said you meant to go out or have your lunch break
when you said you was going to have your lunch break?
Some of these promises that we are, we try to keep to ourselves
when in practice, they can feel like they're just getting
further and further away and it's your job to take this
moment like in this podcast. So just think, OK, where am I on
this journey? Am I feeling like I'm completely
out of control and I'm just pulled in every direction and
I'm going in that direction? I've talked to you about this
before, but I'm going to mention it again.
The sphere of influence. I want you to imagine three
circles inset one from another. Middle circle is control the
green area. These are everything where you
can control the outcome. The 2nd circle is called
influence. It's yellow.
These are all the things that you can only influence.
You do not have control over the outcome.
And the 3rd circle is red. This is the section where you
have no control or no influence. It's almost like if you cannot
do any, if you cannot influence it or you cannot control the
outcome of it, you've got to strike it off the list.
In this case, I believe if you're feeling like you're lost
right now, you're feeling like you're in the mire, you're in
the yellow area, you can influence how you use your time.
We know that social work is about crisis intervention.
So some things are without your control, right?
They're in the red area, but you can sit comfortably in that
yellow area outside of work. It certainly is the green area
control. You can control the outcome.
Now when I think back to the version of me that used to wake
up at 3:00 AM in the morning thinking, Oh my God, I didn't
write up the case notes for that.
Oh my goodness, the minutes. I didn't put the minutes on the
system or I didn't call back this parent.
It happens. And there is a level of
acceptance that living up to the expectation that you wanted to
when you left university, some of you may realise it doesn't
always materialize. You can do your absolute best
and give your absolute best. But one family could take up
your whole week due to crisis intervention, due to placements,
due to child protection medicals, right?
And that immediately puts you back into the place where you're
not meeting your own expectations.
I was reading something the other day that said happiness is
expectations versus reality. And do you need to lower your
expectations to meet the reality of the circumstances that you're
in? Trying to make sense of not
meeting your own standards sometimes can feel like failure.
It can feel like you're letting yourself and your families down.
I know that feeling. And you go to bed knowing that
feeling. You wake up knowing that feeling
and when someone emailed you for the second time and said I
haven't had a response, you're like, Oh my goodness, I really
had it in mind to respond. I just didn't get an
opportunity. And sometimes we can just beat
ourself up about it. I just want to remind you,
you're human. Yes, social work has high
expectations. And I know any social work with
integrity will have high expectations for themselves, let
alone the local authority or the trust of the charity one is
working for. However, there has to be some
form of boundaries or balance between expectations and
reality. As a social worker, you're
always learning, you're always growing, and you are allowed to
have hope. Hope in yourself, hope in the
families, hope in the system. But if we're constantly
measuring ourselves up against these expectations and these
expectations you and I both know near impossible to meet given
the volume of work or the type of work that we're doing, then
the question really comes up as to what new expectations that
are nearest to the standards that you set for yourself and of
course, professional standards will you feel most comfortable
to accept. Now I'm going to move on to a
question that I've received over summer.
I've received a couple actually. We'll see how many we can we can
get through together. But one of the questions
literally was this, and I want to give a shout out to Sarah in
Australia. Thank you Australia for
listening. Sarah has written here.
When does it stop? How loaded is that question,
Sarah? The truth is our mindsets
constantly sit around creating a space for work life balance.
So the general answer to a question like that would be find
some balance. But as a social worker,
generally speaking, the work is not balanced by nature.
So how do we create balance in a space where that isn't already
existing? For me, I would say this is
about your boundaries. You've let the work overtake you
completely to the point where you're like, when does this
stop? You have to create the stop.
And from the moment you create the stop, such as taking a
moment to listen to this podcast, listen to the
questions, answer the questions, from the moment that you do
that, you then create the boundaries.
I had a coaching session with someone last week who said,
right, five times a week I'm having my lunch break.
That's it. I've had enough.
And my question to them was, what challenges might come up
for you in trying to execute that objective?
And the obvious answer, of course, is crisis intervention.
Or perhaps it's raining outside so I can't go on the walk to
have the break that I want to have.
Coming back to that expectation versus reality.
So in the end, they decided on making sure they have two
mandatory breaks a week and the 3-4 or five are considered bonus
because that way one is training their brain to accept the
reality but also have goals within that reality.
Now 2 lunch breaks are better than saying I'm going to have 5.
Knowing that the workplace itself and the way that the
system works is not set up with boundaries.
In that way, the crisis will hit you hard and fast.
We all know that one e-mail, right?
So my answer to you Sarah, is to create the boundaries.
Look at the sphere of influence, the yellow area, the 2nd circle
of influence. What can you influence?
What do you have the power to influence?
Don't focus on the red area, which is the way your question
is framed. It's through the red area.
When does it start? Like I've got no control over
this. Complete and utter defeat.
No. Let's change the mindset around
that and consider what can you influence.
Even that question alone gives another connotation to the
concept of work life boundaries. OK, let's go for a second
question here. And the second question is from
Mike in Ireland. Hello, Mike.
Nice to hear from you, Mike. Now, Mike here has said that
he's access coaching, he's access therapy, he's access
counselling. For various reasons, he's asked
me not to share all of those and the coaching was not with me to
confirm. But coaching has been the most
effective and Mike still wants to know why is that?
Why is coaching different to counselling or therapy or
mentoring Even so, thanks for your question Mike.
And Simply put, let's consider this from power dynamics point
of view. In a mentor relationship, a
mentor is considered to have been there and done that.
They are considered the expert and the mentee is to follow the
direction of the mentor. Counselling is very much about
looking backward and making sense of and creating some level
of understanding of what's happened in the past.
Coaching is about looking forward and the power dynamic
doesn't exist in coaching. The coachee and the coach are on
par, and I'd like you to consider this as a conversation.
You've experienced this, so you'll know.
It's a conversation where the coach is posing questions to you
to help you find the answer. It's predicated on the fact that
you already have the answer and it's the coach's job to ask you
the right questions to help you find your solution.
It's not like a mentor mentee relationship where it's
expected. The mentor gives you the answer.
In coaching, you are helped to find your own answer.
I get in my coaching sessions all the time, please tell me the
answer. And I'm like, no, I can't do
that. I'm not able to do that because
my take and my judgement on what is happening, My analysis of
what's happening is through my eyes, my experience and my
knowledge, my skills. But you have the exact same
skills and qualities I do because you are the expert of
your own life and that's how you find your solution.
So coaching is about bringing you think of it as a bridge from
where you are on one side to the bridge and helping you get to
the other side of the bridge. It's about moving you forward.
I would like to revisit the quote before I go.
Thank you for your questions. I'll continue to answer them on
future episodes. Not until we are lost do we
begin to understand ourselves. That's an indication there is
power within being lost. There is power within thinking.
This is overwhelming. This is too much for me because
that power lies in the opportunity for you to stop,
reflect, and consider what you want for yourself moving forward
and create the boundaries using your sphere of influence to do
so. When you're in the mix, and I
mean when you're feeling like you're underneath everything and
you're just treading water trying to keep afloat, sometimes
it feels like you can't stop. And admittedly, some of my some
of the ways I coped with that level of stress when I was in
practice, I'm still seeing in myself now.
I'm still having to spend time to stop, reflect, pause and
decide on the way forward because that routine of that
high level of stress, it takes time to change that behaviour.
And I can say that it takes time, but just like you get up
for work every morning, you've got to get up for yourself until
next month. I am so pleased to be back here.
I am so pleased to be talking to you or I cannot wait for us to
continue again. So hello to all of you in China,
all of you in Africa, all of you in America, of course, my
hometown, the UK, giving you love, giving you blessings.
I pray you have a blessed month. Until next time, remember to
take time and headspace for you because the work is important,
but you, you're essential. God bless you.