Making Mistakes

Working in the field of social work, or I suppose any helping profession comes with a bit of a burden: the sense of responsibility for someone else’s well-being. I say burden, because we tend to take this very seriously, and it’s scary! Especially at the beginning. In social work, we tend to feel that responsibility for someone’s emotional well-being. After my first few years fearing this, I came to see it as a luxury. Someone else is trusting me with his/her emotional life, and is revealing inner, often private, thoughts that perhaps no one else in their life is privy to. So, yes, this is scary, but it’s also a privilege. Perhaps if we shift our lens from feeling fearful to perceiving it as an honor, that can be a starting point to feeling more confident. 

Making mistakes is a natural “right” that should be bestowed on all of us when we come into this world. In fact, it is. We learn to walk, we fall down. We learn to talk, we make up bizarre sounding words. We learn to eat, we smear our food all over our face. So what happens after toddlerhood that activates this sense of dread when making mistakes? Sure, it can have to do with how these errors or mistakes were handled by our parents, our teachers, etc., but it is extremely curious to me that the majority of us have this ability to punish ourselves. And so, that raises questions about a much larger phenomenon - why this is such a common feeling. I don’t have the answer, but I do think that those of us who go into the profession of social work are somewhat “broken”. And I don’t mean that to be critical - I’m one of you! I mean that in the sense that whether we realize it or not, social work has drawn us in, has spoken to us, likely because of our own connection to needing help or living through some difficult times. That being said, somewhere along the line it’s like we got the message “get it right, or else”.

​I have tried to live my life with the words of Elbert Hubbard in mind. He was an American writer and philosopher, who said “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” I hope you too can adopt that philosophy. Remember:

• We are entitled to make mistakes. It’s how we grow. 
• Mistakes are opportunities to improve skills.
• Making mistakes shows we are learning new things, and pushing ourselves.
• Making mistakes builds resilience.
• Making mistakes allows us to understand what we need.
• Making mistakes can actually build confidence; because when you work through it, there is a sense of accomplishment.

Being scared of making errors creates, and is a result of, an irrational burden of perfectionism. And it can be paralyzing. The more you allow yourself to embrace mistakes, you will broaden your opportunities. The more you take risks, the more you will broaden these opportunities, increase your confidence, and self-worth. I’m one to know. I remember being terrified of teaching for the first time, and asking a peer “what do you do if you don’t know the answer to a student’s question?”. This is an example of feeling that sense of responsibility; I can’t let someone down. He simply said “say you don’t know”. This was mind-bending. I can do that??! It was freeing!! I don’t have to be perfect. It was life-changing. Give this permission to yourself. You don’t have to be perfect. I have lived through many new experiences that brought on a lot of anxiety; and I pushed myself to experience those extremely unpleasant feelings because something within me said that I needed to grow. And with each new experience, I came through in a mostly positive fashion. What did that tell me? That I can do it. And with each new experience, even though there was anxiety of “failure”, when I pushed through and came out the other side unscathed, it gave me new ammunition to go into the next experience, and the next one, and the next one - until I saw that there wasn't’ as much at stake as I thought, and there wasn’t so much to be feared.

So, as a social worker, we have the ability to consult - with a supervisor or a colleague. You don’t know of a resource your client needs? Ask someone. You think you may have said the wrong thing to a client? Go back the next time and address it. You are modeling very positive behaviors: asking the client how he/she felt about what you said or didn’t say; you are showing that you are able to self-reflect; you are showing that you want to build a positive relationship; and you are showing that you are human, and fallible… and it’s ok! What better model for human interaction?!
If this topic "speaks" to you, hear more on Episode 13 of WWDMD.