Thursday, June 24, 2004

MEATY,BEATY,BIG AND THICK NECKED WITH A MASTER'S DEGREE

Our team leader was a master's level psychologist who was built like a Mr.Universe contender and he had pictures of tractor pulling on the wall of his office, and pictures of monster trucks. and in the middle was his degree from the school of tractor pulling, monster truck racing psychologists.
This guy was a fucking piece of work. I never liked him. Part of the weekly team meeting was dealing with patient requests for privs...like unsupervised on grounds walks and 15 minute off campus privs. This guy would ask our opinion and then arbitrarily give or deny requested privs based solely on the progress in individual therapy with him. I used to imagine what an individual session must be like with this guy, and images of the darkest nature would fill my head, and I would shut them out.He was one controlling motherfucker.
Our weekly team meetings mostly focused on team dynamics...how we, the team, were interacting. No matter how many times I would try to point out that the patients were more important than the team dynamics, I would be shut down. This pissed me off, then the focus would shift ( by Mr. Tractor Pull ) to my anger related issues.Then everyone in the room would be grilling me about my anger and I would end up in that corner my mom always said was my enough is fucking enough spot and I should turn to the offensive, pointing out other people's shit.
He made a mistake fucking with me like this...not only was I learning the craft in a clinical way, I had been doing this for several years relying on my gut and common sense. And my gut and common sense told me on some deep, disturbing level this guy was way fucked up. And my clinical training confirmed my gut.
Unfortunately, the team as a whole was so weak that he rolled his monster truck ideology over us all the time.
he encouraged us to disclose personal things about ourselves in these meetings.
Which I didn't do...I focused on my perceived anger and let him focus on that...truth was, I was angry and it was an emotion that was easy to keep one dimensional.And focused.

There were a couple of women on the team who weren't so lucky, and, I found out as time past that he was seeing them in individual "supervision", away from work. They had disclosed personal things, and he exploited them to his advantage...the details of which would come out in the rumor mill and be blurted out by me in one particularly tense meeting.
The team was pressuring one of these women (Becca,my lab partner) to disclose her reasons for being so withdrawn and "not being part of the team".She was stonewalling and we were running out of time. In my mind, we were wasting our time dealing with team dynamics that weren't even really team related...so I said "What's the matter Becca?Kat got your tongue"? And there was a shit storm. Kat (the other woman in this equation), almost came off her seat in a rage that I would insinuate they were having sex. Becca started cursing me and my "anger"...Mr.tractor Pull jumped on this and tried to shift the focus to me and my anger. I never said anything about sex (:P) but my point had been made.
Sometime later, it would come out that not only were these two lapping it up, but Becca was fucking an 18 year old patient on our unit...he was beaten down psychologically by Mr. Tractor Pull and transferred to the ICU unit, where he remained for the duration of his treatment. His relationship with Becca was explained away as a fantasy and Mr. tractor Pull continued to exploit Becca and Kat into a lesbian relationship that cost Kat her marriage and both of them their jobs before the administration realized Mr. Tractor Pull was a liability and got rid of him on a paperwork issue.
His leaving was a rebirth for our team...of course, all the bullshit was explained away in that corporate/therapeutic not really explained sort of way and we moved on.
I would run into the above mentioned 18 year old patient at a Husker Du concert 3 or 4 years after all of this, and guess who he was living with???
That's right...
Further proof that A: Love is blind. or B: It really is a sick fucking world...
You decide.
Wow...this has worn me out...I'll deal with our unit coordinator tomorrow.

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