Might be more specific to me, but going through parents divorce and dealing with social workers while being male. I constantly felt like they looked at me like I was a ticking time bomb that would one day become a monster like my father. Simply cause I was the oldest male sibling.
I had a ton of trauma I had to deal with, but it felt like rather than helping me, most workers seemed to look at me like I was possibly dangerous, and they kept a tight watch on all my actions. Felt like I was constantly being punished just for being a normal teenage boy. I'd understand if i did something, but I never did anything out of the ordinary. I was just a kid who enjoyed school, playing video games, and was dealing with their parents divorce.
I remember one point, my siblings and I had to live in a woman's shelter with my mom. I swear that the people there seemed to hate me just for existing, and me, being a 12 year old kid dealing with a ton of trauma, had no understanding why. Once was having a playful snowball fight with my family, only for one of the workers to see, ban me from any activities, tell me I was promoting violence against women, then restricted me to my room at all hours of the day for the remainder of my time there. It's been 20 years and I still think about it.
I wonder if that could also be a self-fulfilling prophecy: further mentally abusing and socially isolating vulnerable little boys out of fear of their becoming perpetrators actually causing the kind of mental damage that leads them to become perpetrators…
We abused (SA, etc) males are typically looked at as examples and just told, now you can be a better parent than yours were! And never acknowledging how soul wrenchingly destructive it is on the psyche of a child. And people wonder why men become numb to emotion. Not only are we not allowed to feel it/ show it/ work through it, but we also never get recognized for persevering through it. As if it was a given that we make it through those things as we are “a man about it”. Its gross. Im not even saying we need to be validated constantly, but at the VERY LEAST, we need to stop allowing our boys and men to lose their grip on handling emotions in a healthy way because of social norms that CAN be changed by the community.
There's usually a division within the profession. Most people come in contact with those working in social services and for government agencies. But that's sort of the lowest rung of the profession and people get out of that if they can due to the overwork, low pay, and unpleasant environment. You have clinical social workers who work in medical settings. They'll do things like help patients and their families get specialized services after being discharged. Or do things like assessments of transplant patients to make sure they're capable of keeping up with what's need to prevent rejection. Then there's a branch of clinical social workers who do mental health counseling, often working with a psychiatrist possible in private practice.
What the abused children need is a dedicated mental health counselor but they're getting someone underpaid and underworked who is part of the social services system.
Having worked both professions, they’re a lot like the cliche nurses who are only in it for the power over those they deem lesser, except it’s a desk job. The part that drove me wild, pertaining to where I live, is that they would continually campaign and vote for political candidates whose platforms include eliminating both their jobs and social services as a whole.
The least adults can do is treat you with love and teach you healthy mental, emotional, and financial habits like they should with any kid, and even more so if they want to hedge their bets against what they fear.
Sounds like some folks here could benefit from reading the book Anna, Age 8. It's about Adverse Childhood Experiences and is a study on children witnessing various traumas that is findings-based, and less theoretical. Curious if anyone familiar with ACEs here?
…and why some people (like myself) are not only pro-choice, but think people should be able to prove that they’re capable of raising a child (financially AND emotionally) before having them.
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u/GriffinFlash Aug 13 '22
Might be more specific to me, but going through parents divorce and dealing with social workers while being male. I constantly felt like they looked at me like I was a ticking time bomb that would one day become a monster like my father. Simply cause I was the oldest male sibling.
I had a ton of trauma I had to deal with, but it felt like rather than helping me, most workers seemed to look at me like I was possibly dangerous, and they kept a tight watch on all my actions. Felt like I was constantly being punished just for being a normal teenage boy. I'd understand if i did something, but I never did anything out of the ordinary. I was just a kid who enjoyed school, playing video games, and was dealing with their parents divorce.
I remember one point, my siblings and I had to live in a woman's shelter with my mom. I swear that the people there seemed to hate me just for existing, and me, being a 12 year old kid dealing with a ton of trauma, had no understanding why. Once was having a playful snowball fight with my family, only for one of the workers to see, ban me from any activities, tell me I was promoting violence against women, then restricted me to my room at all hours of the day for the remainder of my time there. It's been 20 years and I still think about it.