Thursday, October 7, 2010

I have added another shelter, but not as a movement therapist. This is part of my certification requirements for Substance Abuse Counseling, and I won't mention which program it is, for confidentiality purposes.
With this internship, I am spending 8 hours a week at a live-in, intensive, 6-month program with 24 women living in a house. For the first 8 weeks, the clients are not allowed contact with the outside world except for medical and legal purposes. then, you are slowly allowed contact.
At first I was pissed, because, since I am not in a Master's program or PhD program for this certification, I am not allowed to sit and listen to the group therapy sessions. This isn't true for all programs, just this one. I felt stuck sitting in the shelter part of the premises, taking urine tests whenever the clients came in from the outside, doing bed checks, helping to prepare the snacks, giving them their meds and logging everything, searching their purses and bags,
but,
now I have a very different attitude. I am very grateful that I get to witness their daily living, and their personal interactions outside the AA meetings and the group therapy sessions. As I have been witnessing interactions, I have noticed that a performative element is introduced when a prostitute thinks someone who might be important in judging their ability to leave the facilities might be within earshot, a self-consciousness choreography of behavior, and in other programs I have noticed that for many people, group sessions are more about finding the right thing to say than to say what is real. It may be different here, I don't know, but in the position I am in now with this program, I feel like I get to see behind the scenes.
I get to see what their personal hygiene habits are, how they are treated by the people who take care of them on a daily basis, how they interact when the spotlight isn't on them, and also, I am beginning to find correlations between certain meds, certain drugs, and the affects they have on the client's movement. I give them their meds, so I also get to ask them questions about their meds and how they affect them.
When I say I give them their meds, what I do, which is legally appropriate, is, I hand them the bottle of pills and witness what they take and how much, and state it in a log that they sign along with me.
Drug addiction largely involves ritual. Imprisonment involves a certain perception and treatment of the body, which exists in shelters to a somewhat lesser extent, and there's a ritualistic element there too that I am beginning to discover. I think if I weren't a movement therapist, I would now be feeling much more frutrated...when I told my teacher what I was being required to do, he got angry and said I was given the worst job possible.
Like when I waited tables, I really learned,
It's all about your perspective.

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