Everyone has a story

One of the most interesting things about my job (and there are MANY, lol) is working with new clients. Most of the clients on my caseload have been with me for a year or two now, so it's easy to feel a sense of complacency after you've known a client for awhile. Sure, there are unexpected moments in counseling, but it's not frequent. Most of them can be fairly predictable....with their behavior anyway. So when I get a new client, there's an intriguing anticipation (as long as he/she isn't the difficult client from hell...those aren't as much of a treat to work with) of wondering what his or her story is and what has brought them to walk into our door for treatment. Many of them have a long history of addiction, hence some of them have been in and out of treatment numerous times. But what I have learned working with addicts is that no matter how many times they have had treatment, you have to treat them as if it is the first time because it could be the time it works for them. This past week has been stressful and at times chaotic, as Carol and I have been slammed with new clients transferring to us from a facility that closed abruptly for whatever unknown reason. It's always interesting to see how other clinics do things either similarly or differently than us.

So far (knock on wood) my handful of new clients have been unusually cooperative and nice. I guess I'm so used to resistant and non-compliant low income level clients who typically have a bad attitude that working with these new clientele almost feels like a walk in the park...well, not exactly...but you know what I mean. As part of the intake process of paperwork and putting the new charts together, the doctor I work with wants me to pull certain forms from their former clinic charts that we have. Alot of them have been real thick, which means I've had to sift through lots of paperwork. Through this tedious process, I came across some odd 'personal history' forms that this clinic does that we don't do. At my clinic, we have them fill out very generic paperwork, but the real personal stuff is reserved for when I meet with them to do an intake assessment on a program on my computer. It looks like this clinic wasn't up with the age of technology though; everything was on paper/done by hand!! Holy cow. I would have chronic carpal tunnel. How can some places still have such archaic administrative practices? Wow. Anyway, getting off my tangent there.

What I noticed as I looked at this 'personal history' form was what I thought were odd, irrelevant albeit interesting questions they were asking. I joked to my coworker Manuela that it seemed more like a form they would give someone to fill out if they were applying for a job with the FBI. There was a section on nutrition. It asked what the person typically eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner followed by how often per week they eat each meal and whether they eat a "low," "moderate," or "high" (no pun intended, hehehe) volume of food. An employment section that included how long they were there and if they weren't there anymore, why not. Another one asked how many sexual partners the person has had in the past 10 years and check 'yes' or 'no' for vaginal, anal, and/or oral sex. I'm surprised it didn't ask whether they bought Fruit of the Looms or Victoria's Secret undergarments. Or how often he/she goes to the bathroom or masturbates. It's like, geez. If these kinds of questions must be answered (and I don't believe they do), give the person some privacy to at least not have to write it down on a form that becomes their permanent record in the clinic. Tell the counselor instead on their own terms/comfort level. No wonder it can take clients a long time to feel comfortable trusting and opening up to a healthcare professional.

Have we become too desensitized to treating someone like a human being, instead using labels to describe someone as "morbidly obese," "follower," etc? We as individuals can be these things, sure, but it is only a small part that encompasses our overall self/soul. What's covered on a piece of paper doesn't even begin to reveal the real juicy elements of one's life 'stories' that I get to hear in my many great and at times infamous "Sessions."

Everyone has a story. If I'm lucky, I get to hear their 'novel' with its many chapters....not the Cliff Notes version.