At Work

This is a picture (taken with my cool, new, uber phone) of my work place, Eucalyptus House, in Daly City, CA. It is a transitional house for the severely mentally ill as well as those with dual diagnosis (meaning having a substance abuse issue along with a mental illness). The house operates under a social milieu model, meaning staff are guides in the community, helping clients (residents) learn daily living skills such as cooking and cleaning. Staff also works to create a healthy social environment where clients can learn to interact in more healthy manner, especially how these interactions may work out in the "real world". Staff model healthy living with each other, with the residents and provide basic level counseling. Our house is primarily made up of schizophrenics and those with severe bi-polar diagnosis, with some extremes in character disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder. Our ultimate goal is to help people become a part of the social community again in an independent or shared independent living situation, hopefully with a job or involved in educational classes.

I have worked at Eucalyptus House since October 2002. I work 45 hours a week in two days. I come in on Thursdays at 1pm and stay overnight until Friday mornings at 10am. Sundays I arrive at 11:30am and stay until 10am on Monday. I have a staff meeting from 10am to 12pm on Wednesdays. For now, I have the rest of the week off. Which is nice and leaves days open where I can put classes (photography) or another internship, since I am still trying to decide whether to finish off my hours towards my MFT license.

Not a bad gig! The work itself can be difficult and it takes a lot of self-awareness, not to react to someone else's stuff or to react to your own stuff that might be triggered. Often, unfortunately, folks do get recycled back into the "System" (mental health system) due to not being able to reach an independent level of functioning. Sometimes this is due to not taking medications (a common symptom is that medications are poisons, which in my point of view may or may not be true). But, whatever I may feel about medications, I do see what happens when people go off their anti-psychotics. Whew. It can be a little scary sometimes, although mostly it's just sad. It's hard seeing this because I really want people to succeed and be able to engage their lives. Occasionally though, we do have people go on to get jobs and move out to their own place. Yay!!!! A smaller number of those folks manage to keep steady while most eventually end back up in the system again. And ultimately, it is these successes that make it all worthwhile.