Second-Degree Burns

Quiz time. Try to fill in the blanks. The purpose of the Ontario Disability Support Program is____________. The reason we have a Public Guardian and Trustee is____________. Welfare offices are meant to __________. The unifying rationale behind the criminal justice system is______________. (Ok, the last one’s a trick question – no one really knows that answer).

I won’t spoil the fun by giving you too many clues, but here a hint: the official mission statements of these and similar organisations categorically do not endorse goals of demeaning those who seek their help, undermining their sense of worth, or compounding their experience of poverty. And yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly the conclusion you come to if you are, or you speak to, one of the many people in this city who are forced to seek public supports to eke out a basic living. Maybe you haven’t worked since you shattered that hand or back at manual labour. Maybe you’re so anxious or depressed you can’t remember the last time you slept the whole night, or woke up before noon. Maybe the world has you labelled because of your Down syndrome, and you just need to feel a little less vulnerable. Whatever the reason, those of us who seek social services are likely facing difficulties that can never be fully understood by even our closest friends, let alone the pros who get paid to lend a hand.

Everyone is wounded – it’s an inescapable part of being alive. Accidents, injuries, wrongs, weights laid upon us even before we were born, those innumerable human burdens that we can neither prevent nor completely account for. I’ll call them first-degree burns – scars that mark (in unique and often vastly unequal ways) our challenges, our vulnerability, or our need for particular care from the society we belong to. It might be a physical disability, suffered yesterday or incurred at birth. It might be a mental ailment, psychological trauma, or bewilderment at a new culture. You probably know your own, and you’ve probably judged another’s. For better or worse, because no one else can truly feel our first-degree burns, each of us is ultimately responsible for managing our own, hopefully with the help and understanding of wise and loving neighbours. But as our society has changed, gathered riches and loosened knits, many of the jobs associated with addressing the most obvious effects of these wounds have been transferred to the trained hands of social service professionals – doctors, counsellors, government agents, advisors and advocates with all sorts of hats. People like me are entrusted with balming first-degree burns – and our first order of business should be to do no further harm. Sadly though, too many of the people in this city who’ve been scalded in the first instance seem to suffer second-degree burns in the so-called helping process. Maybe someone is sneered at, or shunted away, after waiting a long time in a line up. Maybe the distant tone of some official correspondence makes clear only the coldness with which somebody feels their issue is being treated. Maybe a person leaves a meeting without feeling listened to, or even looked at. Whether intended or not, these slights often compound the damage that leads people to seek help from social services in the first place. And they happen so often we’ve got both words of description and avoidance for what’s happening: re-victimization, institutional abuse, or else oversensitivity, the so-called hopeless or insufferable cases, people no one knows what to do with.

But second-degree burns are, though horrendously common, neither necessary nor excusable. Fortunately, they’re also usually healable, given sufficient time, sincerity, and mutual humility. Think how nasty it feels to be disrespected, devalued, dismissed – even in passing or implicit ways – by someone whom you’ve come to for help. Consider how the bitter taste of belittlement spreads within you, curls your tongue and fists, stirs up anger, shame, resentment, even rage and self-hatred. Now ask yourself what would make that evil feeling dissipate. Although reciprocally cruel revenges might first spring to mind, I’m convinced that what most of us really want, and more so, what would be most helpful, is simple recognition of the pain that second-degree burning causes us, and a few concrete assurances from the ones who’ve brought it on that they’ll try to act more care-fully in future. Fundamentally, we all want to be understood.

Practicing compassion in professional relationships, and re-attuning ourselves to the influence we have on each other’s well-being, has positive effects even when the particular assistance or answer someone may have originally wanted can’t be granted. The sober reality is that, in the kind of institutional environments I’m talking about – the welfare or ODSP office, the housing help centre, the legal aid clinic, etc – there’s often an adamantine legal or practical reason for saying no, sorry, I can’t give you what you’ve come looking for. While denials may be frustrating, discouraging, or a good reason to push for political change, they aren’t in themselves what causes most second-degree burns, aren’t what makes people feel leprous or invisible. If we’re the ones choosing to take on professional responsibilities towards others, or if we’re the ones tasked with the tough job of putting a face to government policies, it’s important to ponder how our ways of treating people might actually do them more harm. Are we able to see the forested selves amidst the trees of discreet problems, deracinated issues? If it’s hard, can we ask each other why? Despite the ten thousand things that make it easy to treat others, and especially the neediest among us, as less worthy of the care and attention we want for ourselves, we know, as people who both give and receive second-degree burns, that no goodness comes through increasing the suffering that already floods the world through irreparable breaches. There are daily leaks we can set about plugging.