I have not found that book learning and on-the-job-training gave me the tools I needed to understand and help people. Instead I have had to use experience, curiosity, and following my own spirit or moral compass. Now, I think this is largely because I didn’t understand the realities of black market America with compassion. Without understanding the rules, the pros the cons and the oppression that results from the crime industry it can be hard to provide the necessary empathy and validation to establish connection and be supportive. Because I didn’t get that training in school, I have had to undergo a journey to learn to be helpful.

As I have come to see it, in poorer communities the impact of black market America functions as an iron curtain that some earnest people who enter the field are not formally trained to understand or believe. It’s true that social workers who come from these communities may recognize black market realities quicker than I have. Indeed, I can recall co-workers who really helped me understand things along the way. On the other hand, perhaps it just takes a lot of time to understand streets and crime well enough to see how it shows up in peoples’ behavior and the decisions they make. Indeed, navigating this world in poverty and without financial aid is not an easy thing to do.

Still, many social workers like me stay encapsulated in their world view for extended periods of time. While some of us are only there to do our training in poor communities, many of us stay in them with our salaries and the discourse of our profession, things that keep many of us insulated.

What School Didn’t Teach Me:

In school, I took sociology and counseling psychology. I learned a lot about injustice in third world countries and wealth-fare (tax breaks for the rich,) but this did not prepare me to understand the affects of corruption and crime on our society’s most vulnerable individuals, the homeless, protective custody parolees, and the people with mental health challenges like addiction and schizophrenia.

I have generally been considered a conscientious social worker performing high in stats and looking good on paper. But learning how to get street smart and overcome the limits of my own world view has taken upper-middle class me a long time. I have come to believe that crime is a legitimate industry in this country that is vital to redistributing the wealth. It plays a bigger part in governing vulnerable individuals than social workers who do not understand it can. And yet vulnerable people are often victimized by its machine and need to express themselves and need support to help them find the freedom they may seek.

On the Ground Lessons in Black Market America:

About six years into my career, I moved and took a job in a Seattle, Section 8 Housing Authority Complex. It was a position that no one else would take. I did so brashly. When I found out my boss who I had witnessed expel a naive client who was unwittingly letting a boyfriend deal drugs out of her apartment, had a drug problem herself, I stopped heeding her.

The needle and pipe drug trades were visible throughout the housing complex just by taking a flight of stairs. The management had records on their residents that were off limits to us. I didn’t really understand that my desire to help the poor mentally disturbed individuals instead of the dealers and thugs made me a liability to the powers that be who hired me.

I didn’t disapprove of the residents who became addicts. However, as I started to see that the focus of the authority management, the police and the power brokers were not utilizing their resources on safety, I started to become protective. I didn’t initially realize that by disapproving of the violence and corruption that come with the drug trades, that I was essentially putting myself at odds with the powers that be. I was becoming a vigilante.

Who Was I and Why Was I in this Situation?

Back in college, I had taken up residence in the ghetto community that surrounded the commuter university I attended. I had caught a case of male anorexia in the private prep school I attended and wanted to evade the people who tormented me, like my parents who were on the faculty. I worked and studied and was so isolated to have not attended a single college party.

I secretly believed that the suburban social working professionals that I interviewed for school projects were burned out cogs in a machine. These social workers I interviewed didn’t seem to understand or help the people I worked beside in the local businesses that paid under-the-table wages. I believed, I’d learned more from a three-minute KRS-One lecture blaring out of the radio in the deli I worked for, than I did from those interviews.

But money was tight, I needed a job, and I was after all a high performing student with a stellar work ethic. When my isolated life style resulted in a second mental health crisis, the therapist I found was always directing me to go on social security. I found myself locked up for a month and started on a high level of medication cocktails that catapulted me over the barrier I was facing. Finally, I accepted a role as a social worker.

Instead, of social security, I got a master’s level job and started a master’s program. I did eventually excel on the job, graduated and got promoted to the highest level before going into management. I knew how to work with people and had satisfied customers. Still, I used significant clinical barrier between the people I worked with and my own state of mental health. I really did not relate to them or use my lived experience to be helpful.

Learning My Lesson:

Back at the section 8 authority compound, one resident, who had proved to be an accurate intelligence source, told me that he admired my ways, but had heard word that I might become a resident myself one day and he feared that for me.

Now, the story is very complicated, but when I did face specific personal threats and fled for the Canadian border, the police did stop, separate me from my car and track me until I was admitted for three months into a state hospital in Montana.

Before I could get back into social work, I had to accept an arranged job at a suburban Italian Delicatessen. Coming out of a period of transience, I had to accept that my belongings were moved around in the apartment I could barely afford. I had to accept that my employment related mail was opened before I could get to it. I had to accept that I frequently ran into street people who suggested they worked for the CIA. And finally, I had to accept that I had to bike twenty miles a day to get to work and back. Finally, I went on medication and admitted that I was a schizophrenic. Not until I was able to make friends with the workers and bosses at the Italian Deli did I find myself granted the opportunity to go back to social work.

Lessons Learned:

What I have learned about being a social worker is that it is important to respect the crime industry and the limits of my own power. Within the section 8 complex there were likely informants and spies who were cutting deals ultimately to save lives even though lives were lost. Keeping the money flowing including that of my low wage pay check is always part of the game.

At one point, the newspaper reporter I was speaking to wanted to go undercover in the building. She did not understand that the whole power structure knew who she was and expressed anger at me for speaking to her before she even left the building.

One could argue that social workers do work for the system and are not paid to start social movements. When I was in college and judged the system in a negative light that kind of statement would have been very discouraging to me. But I have found that the social worker who is committed can understand all the mechanisms of injustice and go as far as they can to stretch against the seemingly stagnant system they work for and help their individual clients find the freedom that they seek.

I got a lot of help from reading books like Patrick McDonald’s Memoir on growing up in South Boston, All Souls Day. I found this book taught me a lot about how gangsterism affects impoverished families.

Social workers should not, in my opinion, take their privilege lightly. They should not presume that they could handle the lives their subjects are suffering through. Finding freedom often involves a die-hard belief in the impoverished citizen’s ability to find a role they feel passionately about.

I would not take back anything that happened to me. Social work is still good work. Don’t ever give up your sense of justice that brought you to it in the first place. But remember that people always have a right to move their lives in a healthier direction.

Patrick McDonald, All Souls Day: A Family Story from Southie, Beacon Press, 2007

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I fervently believe that having survivor-led group therapy that redefines “psychosis” is missing in the system.

Over the last nine years, I’ve been leading what I call special message groups in multicultural settings. I have found that such groups can be run safely and have the power to transform lives. However, I do admit that when it comes to kicking people out of group to maintain group equilibrium and safety that I believe there are a few things to consider first.

Firstly, I believe that a group leader needs to be prepared for the fact that mad people show up in very different ways. Group facilitators need to be familiar with and recognize a wide variety of presentations or manifestations. Perhaps group members may feel like they are being mocked by others in the group via illusionary ideas of reference or even controlled by them. They may code up their language for protection. They may treat the facilitator as if the facilitator can hear the same voices they hear. They may not believe, in spite of stories shared, that the facilitator has experienced what they have.

I have prepared myself for these challenges by attempting to better define “psychosis.” I have reconstructed a definition that can sync up a wide variety of what have historically been defined as conditions. I believe if the leader is not prepared to accept all presentations, people will not feel safe talking about their experiences. Intolerance for people who show up in a different or what is perceived as a difficult manner can be extremely hurtful.

Secondly, I believe the facilitator can take measures to help train the group to be brave and tolerant of each other. I frame coming together with the specific purpose of sharing untold stories to be an oft neglected privilege that has unfortunately been denied because the “they” experts say it is not safe.

Spirit of Risk Taking

I am always willing to start out with my own story. I advocate for a spirit of risk taking by acknowledging that people in the group may be so used to dangerous or distressing experiences that guaranteeing safety would be a disservice. I also point out that despite what “they” say, this practice has been an effective movement in different countries and I’ve done it for a long time.

These kinds of comments are treating the “set of symptoms” as a neglected culture that is subjugated. In the earlier stages of group development, keeping the group focused on the things they have in common can help. Also, strongly supporting alienated individuals helps train the group to be more tolerant and can help avoid many problems that come up later in a group. It discourages them from expecting a trouble maker will be kicked out.

Thirdly, because there is a high degree of diversity in the mad community, I believe the facilitator needs to be extremely sensitive to all forms of culture, particularly pertaining to relevant issues of subjugation. Discerning the social factors that are affecting the person shows up in a difficult manner is key. Race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, education, legal justice history, substance abuse history, immigration, gang affiliation, disability, employment history are all social factors that can show up

It is wrong, I believe, to exclude someone because they are testing or trying to teach you about these kinds of issues. Some people may try to dominate the groups. A group facilitator needs to be prepared to accept, learn and support everyone. Again, a person who is not accepted on the basis of something that the facilitator is ignorant about or is not curious to explore, may do harm.

Fourthly, it may be necessary to meet with individuals outside of group to learn more about why they are hurting the group. If a group member is dominating to the point he or she is doing intentional harm, that individual may, in fact, be expressing a need to connect with you.

Perhaps, he is experiencing messages that are extremely misunderstood or there is a cultural issue with you that needs to be talked about.

But when the group is truly becoming unsafe for participants, which is rare, out-of-group meetings are necessary and the facilitator needs to work to better understand the problems that come up in group and clear up any cultural issues.

A meeting could involve two individuals. Making the time for this encounter outside the group is an important resource.

Behavior Contract

Finally, if taking the time for a meeting or two doesn’t improve the behavior, the leader can propose a specific behavior contract to protect the group. This approach is best utilized in real emergency circumstances and needs to be devoid of the leader’s cultural biases to the best of his/her ability. This approach is also something that requires the participant’s input so that the problem can be identified and an agreed upon solution can be proposed.

At the very least, the contract needs to be something the participant can buy into. When the participant takes the power to get involved, consequences can involve sitting some groups out or being referred to an individual therapist or perhaps a different group.

I’d suggest that if the participants take steps outside the group to improve themselves, the leader can be in communication with them, pining for their return.

It is true that many people who suffer from “psychosis” or message crisis also have complex histories, trauma and other co-morbid problems like substance abuse and nuero-diversity. I have seen these kinds of complex issues, that may challenge safety, get addressed within a group process as described, even by survivors who visit programs rather than work in them.

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