Social Work Insecurities

Okay, let's not beat around the bush: Social work is not exactly the most widely respected field out there. I know it, and I don't even respect it that much because I've bought into the crap our society peddles (I am changing in this regard, but bear with me).

Social work isn't valued by most people. I'll consider why this is some other time. Today I'm going to talk about why I don't value it.

I went into SW so that I could become a therapist, but I had grave misgivings. Shouldn't I get a PhD in clinical psychology? Was I going to be able to do therapy or just case management? What will I tell the rich bastard-lawyers and arrogant prick-MDs at my high school reunion? Am I "aiming low" out of a deeply ingrained sense of failure and self-loathing? Will I graduate and just want to go get a PhD again? Has a social worker ever won a Nobel Prize? (Yeah, that's what goes on in my head.)

A lot of this crap I've gotten over, some of it I haven't. I am starting off this blog with this issue because I want to make clear: Yes, I am writing a blog about social work, but it's not because I'm a proud social worker; or because I think my profession is "noble"; or because I think that social work's biopsychosocial approach and systems perspective is the only one that works; it's not because I want to write about how hard, or great, or fulfilling, or low-paying social work is.

Just to be clear, I don't necessarily not think all those things. They just are not why I'm doing this. The reason I'm starting a blog about social work - or at least the reason I'm most conscious of at this moment, which is probably not the core reason, but let's just go along - is because I am a social worker. I'm not even sure how I ended up being a social worker, but here I am. I like my job a lot so far (after about a month), but I am still coming to terms with my "professional identity," whatever that means. So writing here I hope to disassemble that identity and the profession as a whole; and then put it back together in a way the way that works best for me, knowing full-well that it is not me.