Is there a full moon out ?

Good lord this week has been nuts.
Monday... Or.. Someday anyways, I was on the phone with a client for an hour talking through her problems. Tuesday I was on with her two hours talking her out of making a stupid decision. Today I had someone else go to the hospital for making a stupid decision. Fucking hell. I like my job, and I'm hanging in there knowing that this will calm down once the clients get used to me, etc. However, if it does not mostly calm down in a couple of months, it will be time to consider a new job, if I am not already in the damn looney bin. I am doing my best to do things that will keep me out of the looney bin, but I honestly cannot spend too many more nights/weekends on the phone talking someone through something or out checking on someone before my brain starts to erode.

However, I am happy to report that I am feeling much more confident about my work and my judgment calls related to work than I generally do. I am usually really uneasy about anything with a new job, and especially when we're talking about making judgment calls on what mentally unstable people may or may not do. But the last few days, the more I think about things, the more I am okay with what I'm doing. I haven't talked to anyone and there's some possibility that I'll lose my job over something that happened tonight, but I think that most of my co-workers would have done the same thing in my position.

All I can say is, thank goodness for supportive co-workers. They have been more than willing to give me ideas for how to work with people. The one therapist spent about a half hour on the phone with me just coming up with ways to set limits with other people. I loved my old job, but I feel like this one is much more understanding of individual styles. The therapists and other workers seem to understand that not everyone likes to set hard limits and that not everyone is comfortable being super-assertive. They have really talked me through a lot of options and ways of handling things, and tried to make me feel like I'm doing well. They really seem to take the attitude of "lets help you understand this better" as opposed to "why don't you understand this better?" (which is sometimes how I ended up feeling in my old job).

Also, mom deserves a big thank you for sitting up with me for an hour at 4 am to help my nerves calm down. As do numerous people on the internet. And my husband for just generally putting up with my crazy ass work schedule and high stress levels.

The final thanks and praise goes to wal-mart for being open 24 hours so that sleepless social workers can get a sub sandwich and chocolate milk before going back to bed.