boundaries and check lists vs. walking in their shoes

I am trying to work these things out in my head...that is, if I can first manage to put my finger down on the right question(s)...and I don’t know if I’m there yet.

"With all the details to try to keep straight with my clients at IINJ, trying to delegate tasks to others and brainstorming ways to make things streamlined or flow more efficiently in the program as well as following up to make sure that the ball isn't being dropped anywhere (unfortunately, the ball does get dropped sometimes with some clients because we have so many), I haven't been able to concentrate as much on building rapport with the clients that I am there to help. Everything has become much more of a task list. Helping to meet their needs and get all their paperwork done has become much more of a thing to check off on a list than to see myself really working with them. I now feel like I am more often working FOR them, and I am also beginning to feel like I am perpetually behind. There is ALWAYS more that I could be doing to help meet their needs or get things organized. But at the end of the work day, you just have to brush it off and say, "tomorrow", so that you don't get burned out, bring excess stress home to family and friends, etc." (from the previous post)

Since I work with people from the two thirds world, sometimes I can't help but think back to when I was actually living in the two thirds world, at New Life Center in Thailand, and what a contrast life was there compared to how things are now, back before I got a taste of the commuter life. I was at New Life Center primarily to be practicing a "ministry of presence" with the girls in residence, many of whom were survivors of human trafficking. Most of the girls had a lot of problems: psychological, academic, social, familial, financial (all from poverty), health, spiritual, legal, etc. However, my role there was not to be a social worker or a counselor. I was only there as a learner, and a type of mentor (without being able to rely on my verbal skills). There were times when I literally had nothing to do there, but just kind of be with them and try to identify with them. I really wanted a schedule and structure...ANY kind of structure. I even tried to set up certain times of structure with the girls (dance, english tutoring, going "jogging", "going out") but those plans frequently had to be let go. I wanted tangible things I could do for them; to help them or to move them forward in life; to use the privileges and skills that I had grown up with to benefit them. But, I had to face the hard fact that in that time, I could do virtually nothing to change their immediate circumstances.

I was a foreigner, learning how to live with a group of young women (who lived in an unsteady world with a lot of problems) in a foreign context. Though I was more highly educated than they probably ever will be, very little of that mattered while I was there. Much of the time, I felt like a child or a fish out of water, not a person with any kind of game plan to address the problems or the pain surrounding their circumstances. There I was, this educated, rich, independent, white American, with every kind of opportunity and freedom open and available to me (compared to them), feeling most of the time like I was not able to offer a darn thing. In fact, sometimes I felt like a burden, being dependent on them. At points I doubted God's purpose and wondered why I was even there. It was an incredibly humbling experience, not being able to really "do" anything besides just "be" with others. Sometimes, it got to a point where I felt I couldn't stand to be there anymore, like I had to get out, just feeling so helpless and anxious, both on their account and my own. Living there, I really felt like I got a taste of powerlessness at some points, and I hated it. It's an awful feeling.

Why do I bring this up after talking about how busy I am trying to do things for a different group of marginalized people in an office? These two experiences are drastically different. One took place in a Baptist shelter/dormitory in Chiang Mai for girls at risk for and rescued from human trafficking, while the other takes place in an office in Jersey City where professionals, volunteers and students are trying to help refugees and survivors of torture mainly from Africa meet their legal, medical and psychological needs and also help them to adjust into life in America. While the people, places and circumstances are different, the basic idea of both "programs" I have been a part of are the same: to help marginalized people who are survivors of their circumstances (if even just barely) to get to a place where they will be "ok" in life and in the society that they now find themselves in. The method for getting them there in each respective place is somewhat different.

Ok, so, what's the problem? Both of these experiences are good. Both have/are teaching me different things and have/are drastically expanding my worldview.
But, somehow, I can't seem to reconcile these two experiences very well together in my mind.

Maybe, participating in the HNGR program messed me up. Before I left for my internship in Thailand (and had a lot of naive expectations for myself and for others that I would work with that got creamed once I was there for a couple months), my group of outgoing fellow-students talked a lot about identifying with the people that we would work with overseas, of coming to see ourselves as part of their family, as sharing in their joys and sorrows just as Christ shares with us in ours. We were going out already burdened for the places in which we would live, taking with us as a kind of life theme, the need for global unity in the Body of Christ; and the first plan of action to meet this need was to go "seeking to understand and not to be understood."

So there many of us were, all around the globe, seeking to understand what had and was still happening in the two thirds world plagued by war, poverty, disease, slavery, hunger, inequality and the dark side of globalization and how it is affecting people; and also seeking to learn from people and organizations that are working for redemption and transformational development in the name of the Gospel, and how that is part of God's Kingdom work. In the process, many of us felt very broken for the people and situations we encountered and learned in a new way (or for the first time) what it means to practice the Biblical principle of lament.

Personally (and this is hard to admit), I probably did more lamenting over there than was healthy. Maybe I didn't "look out for my needs" as much as I should have as my supervisor sharply pointed out to me at the end of my time there. "You can't help anyone if you are depressed most of the time." True. Quite frankly, I'm not sure how I was supposed to do that when the first girl (the only one who could speak some english) that I was introduced to and assigned to be a friend/english tutor, who showed me around and showed me how to “shower” from a bucket, who I slept next to and who I witnessed overdose on sleeping pills, was suffering from major post-traumatic stress disorder, and nobody warned me about how secondary trauma can affect you: (this is when you spend a lot of time with a PTSD person and begin to over-identify and show some similar symptoms).

Beyond that one intense and then unsteady relationship with that girl, relationships with other girls formed where I began to view them as little sisters, and in a couple rare instances, as peers (a few of them were my age). In the short space of time of a few months, much of their world became much of my world. But then there were times when “my real world” came crashing into “their world”; times like when I moved out of the center into my own room at a different location, when I went out to eat at nice places with my supervisor and other ex-pats, when I frequently used internet cafes to stay connected with people on the other side of the world. And I felt guilty, a lot, because those two worlds couldn’t really mix, and I couldn’t just “brush off” their problems from my head or my heart when I walked through those gates at the end of the day. (I decided recently that it's taken me a full year to "recover" from HNGR; aka, not to feel intense emotions or pain when I think back to my experiences and relationships formed there.)

So again, what does this have to do with my experiences now working with African survivors of torture in Jersey City?

Now, I am in a place where, yes, I am supposed to have compassion for and build relationships with my clients, but our relationships are never technically supposed to become more than that: case manager and client. In fact, everyone working under the counseling department (as I am) has been warned to be careful not to cross that boundary of counselor or case manager/client and to train yourself to shake off the burdens that they bring into the office at the end of the day; because if you don’t, you will burn out. And yes, I’d say for 75% of the time, I have been successful at not becoming overburdened by the problems and circumstances of my clients. Sometimes I do lie awake at night and think about them. Once in a while I do come home sad or intensely frustrated or just feeling drained. But I can hardly say that I identify with them. I can’t really say that I have taken a walk in their shoes or stepped into “their world”.

So the philosophy/system under which I am now working is almost opposite to the one that I learned during the HNGR program. I am mostly doing. I am mostly giving. I am drawing boundaries. And I don’t feel guilty when I go home to a house in the suburbs and a family at the end of the day.

I am brought back to some major questions that I began to wrestle with more than a year ago when I was still in Thailand and had to write a paper on “Wealth, Poverty and Power”. As a member of the elite in the world and as a Christian, what am I supposed to do when encountered with these types of situations? Is it better to identify, to enter in to the places where I would rather not go as an act of “incarnational voluntary displacement” (to quite Henri Nouwen in his book, Compassion)? Is it better to work from a place of privilege, to use skills and the resources available to the elite in order to help people with no resources of their own (kind of like what I’m doing now)? Or, is it possible to try to do both of these things at same time, or to find some middle of the road approach? Am I even asking the right questions?