2 things I hope young developing professionals strive for

There's this flick I've secretly always liked.  It's not family friendly, and it exposes my "unChristian" taste for all that is unholy.  It's a film called Street Kings.  It stars Keanu Reeves as a renegade broken Vice Detective, with an extreme ambivalence towards authority and teamwork.  After a raw and heroic caper, the charismatic and shady Captain Wander (as only Forest Whitaker can pull off) praises Det. Ludlow and prophetically praises "you went toe to toe with evil, and you won" after the hero sprayed down some thugs in a display of prejudiced street justice.

Or, I recently was turned on to an HBO series called True Detective.  I like Woody Harrelson's acting, but Matthew McConaughey's screen skills do eventually steal most of the bravado and appeal.  The tagline for the series is "Touch the Darkness"

Stand toe to toe with Evil.  Touch the Darkness.

I do Christian things.  I go to Church. I pray.  I sing, ancient hymns and contemporary falsettos.  I guess in some of the world's eye, have emphatically drunken the kool- aid.  The fairy tale is well and alive.  Just look into my eyes.

I also work a gig, that for better or less forces me to confront dark things, and demons.  I'm not of the clergy.  I don't perform exorcisms.  I haven't the credentials of a Fortune 500 CEO.  I work a shelter, that provides emergency temporary housing for transients and the homeless.  On a given shift I'm the supervisor, responsible for everything from relational bonding, to data acquisition and entry, to dirty work aka janitorial extraordinaire.  I do crises management to trauma counseling.  Comforter to bouncer.  Confidant to snitch.  A rebel of the law to the prick iron fist of the law- in a very Old Testament kind of way.  Boot to bone.  Tit for tat.  Eye for eye.

I don't work from a position of power,  But rather a keen and profound sense of my limitations and the narrow scope in which I'm allowed to operate.  It can be a stream of steady one moment, the next, an explosive environment in which the local PD is called in like Cavalry.  I've been called sweet, calm, a lover of Jesus (which I never mention), cool.  I've also been called 'mother fucker', an idiot, a snitch.  Never incompetent.

The people I serve come in as 'dual diagnosed'- that is an meth addict coupled with Schizophrenia.  An alcoholic with Paranoia.  A cannabis pheen on top of bi-polar or manic depressive.  And some days, they decide they go ape shit.

Psychotic breaks, I've witnessed them before.  So here is my fifty cent piece of wisdom.

First, serve from a position of vulnerability.  Not in the sense of anxiety or fear.  They'd eat me alive if they sniffed an ounce of that.  One skill I'm developing is to be in the darkness with them, or sometimes become the biggest black hole they'll see.  It's a ploy I use to deescalate.  In order to manage an explosive chaotic situation, I get the aggressor to channel all of their energy, rage, contempt, and verbatim onto me.  It keeps the dozens of other guests and staff safe, so they don't feel overwhelmed.  I step into in the dark, so they have to blindly come seek me.  They fixate and erratically follow me.  Eventually they come to light, and power down, but by them I'm usually the first step in their consequence.  I learn to own it.  I say I don't enjoy this part of the job, but it's for the safety and well being of all.  Be willing to suffer with them, or for them.  Not above them or around them.

Second, the other skill I'm learning is to take the body blows.  Like a human bullet proof vest.  It's neither noble nor healthy. When there's an incident, I decide it's not personal, a character attack, or an all out lightning war on my dignity as a human being.  It's being a specialized field operative who can defuse a ticking time bomb with a tooth pick and some toothpaste.  We operate with little knowledge of the coming tornado and change in weather.  Posture, a neutral but firm body language, and a tempered voice inflection have gone a long way in saving a lot of people a ton of pain.  Sure my body shakes rabidly from the blood boiling when someone is screaming in your face, and the Adrenaline is shooting through the roof only to come brutally crashing down about 45 mins after the fact, but this is where 'self-care' comes in.

I usually after one of these nights perform a ceremony- dubiously named my 'Warming Center hangover' go to Mickey D's and get a biscuit sausage and egg/ hasbrown, plus an extra hasbrown and eat it excruciatingly slow so I can re-learn to enjoy the littlest and simplest things again.  I also look at people, videos that spell beauty to me and enjoy them for a 30 sec interval (in a non creepy way)  Happy puppies is a popular one.

If you understand this, I'd encourage you as your strength, gumption, and dare I say faith allows- be the light that leads people and crowds away from darkness.  And you achieve that so awfully counter-intuitively by stepping into that space or even becoming the darkness so that it serves as a warning.  And secondly, suffer well, with and as much dignity as you can, when the situation calls for it.