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Moody Monday

Published on by my dream walden15 Comments

Moody is when injustices are tolerated because the victim couldn’t speak for themselves

Moody is when injustices are ignored unless somebody dies as a result

Moody is when your colleagues said something stigmatizing and you did nothing to intervene

Moody is when you feel your work is not or less appreciated because you are not a ‘professional’ in this field

Moody is when you try not to make a fuss over the fact you’re working full-time for the price of part-time because you want to be understanding and considerate

Moody is when you are told your contract cannot be changed from a part-time contract to a full-time contract because the human resources department of the leading academic institution cannot or takes a snail pace to process these applications and you can’t help but think WTF?

Moody is when your (other) employer keeps asking you to help print documents for her as though you are a printing shop and when you are already broke

Moody is when you have yet to receive the official confirmation that you’ve been accepted into the research program but you’ve already booked for your next holiday in anticipation of the confirmation

Moody is when you realise you have no money to pay for your rent and holiday and have to take out a loan

Moody is when you’ve lost motivation

Some days are just moody like today

I hope you have a nicer day than mine

Attention please

Published on by my dream walden13 Comments

I had an internal meeting this morning to discuss the case histories we’ve been reading. I sent my comments to the team yesterday, and highlighted the one who hung up on a user with a mental health disorder. I felt this is an important issue and thought they would be interested to find out more about the case due to its potential serious implications, but nobody asked about the case. Instead, a colleague with a background in counselling was asked to share her view on counselling strategies based on the cases she has read. Throughout the meeting, I heard words like borderline, bipolar, self-harm, attention-seeking, manipulative, challenging, lying, faking… She thought one case was truly tragic as though service users needed our sympathy rather than empathy. All of a sudden, I felt all that hard work was down to drain. I hate to think that my colleagues are hypocrites as they’ve been nice to me. Or is that a lie too? Maybe I think too highly of myself, I was naïve to take the cases too seriously and I was naïve to think that my colleagues have the best interests of our users as priority. I don’t understand what my colleagues were thinking when they read those cases, don’t they get mad when a counsellor lose their patience with a user or when a user was being treated unfairly? They are not labels, they are individuals. There is always a possibility that a service user is lying or faking, but it is not for me to judge and I was honestly surprised to hear my colleague think that, although in a way, it is good that she is being frank. I am also guilty of being hypocritical because I thought some of the counsellors were really bad in handling the cases and they have given me a bad impression. As this is a joint collaboration and the counsellors are from different organisations, I guess we have to be diplomatic too when communicating our feedback to the other agencies. It is not that I want to make a huge fuss over the incident but their lack of concern troubles me very much. I can tolerate counsellors’ lack of mental health awareness but to hang up on someone like that is just wrong, if not unethical. Honestly, they could get themselves into a lot of trouble and bad publicity. Maybe I should be more direct and send another email highlighting the potential implications, then at least I could say that I have tried my best. Do they really want my input from a layperson/potential service user perspective or are they just being polite? After all, I am not getting paid for the additional hours I’m spending on these cases (I might get reimburse after the end of my contract but that will not be until October). Anyway, why is it that someone who sends pictures of their self-harm is called attention-seeking, on the other hand, if they don’t speak out, they are called hidden? Either way, both are problematic and stigmatised. Hang on, my bad. I searched for “attention seeking” images from Pixabay and here is what comes up. Maybe I did misunderstood my colleague’s meaning when she said attention seeking. After all, what’s wrong with wanting attention anyway? 😂