Art-therapists; is this what your job looks like?
Hello everyone, I'm just coming back from an "art-therapy" interview (that was at least marketed to me that way) for a summer job and it is making me question my choices and aspirations regarding building an art-therapy career...
[I will be exposing my situation here then ask you some questions about your work 😊] And just so you know, English isn't my first language 😊
For the context, I will be finishing my arts bachelor's degree in two years after taking a big 5 years gap (long story), and I have been thinking for a while now of going into an art-therapy masters, preferably centered around Carl Jung's work.
I saw the offer for the job interview as a great opportunity for me to step a foot into the reality of that path and see if it's a fit for me.
The quarter and the street where the job is located is extremely deprived and full of (literal) crack users. I felt really uncomfortable being menacingly lurked by all these men, especially as a 26 yo woman, which wasn't a great introduction to the job, to say the least. The director was being honest with me and told me her coworkers used to get their jewelry and phones stolen but that they since could somehow mediate the situation (?) 💀 I'm saying this since it also helps explain the facility I had the interview in, which basically is a day center for seniors from that same quarter, living in extreme poverty and isolation, and who kind of self-destructed themselves their entire life, especially with alcohol and drugs.
As soon as I entered the building, I smelt an INTENSE stench and soon realized that it was all of the residents who stank to the point of engulfing the whole ground floor in this horrible, sticky and deep unwashed people odor. I felt like I was to the brink of vomiting the whole time.
I know this might sound harsh and unkind from me but i want to be fully transparent and honest so you have a better view of my situation here.
After having "conversations" with the residents, I realized they were all pretty much senile and mentally ill/not fully there cognitively (probably from substance abuse, because most of them are not even that old), and that my activities there will simply be like an artistic daycare to pass the time. I soon felt exhausted by having to manage their chaos (even if I am an active listener and always make an effort to make people feel heard and understood) and by having to constantly be on the lookout for any appropriate gesture or anger outburst, as I was warned of by the staff. I sensed this deep veil of depression, despair and death covering and choking me.
To the point of my post here:
As art-therapists: 1) Do you feel like you are helping people who *want* to be helped and most importantly who want to help themselves? Or do you feel like you're just a daycare facilitator who has to babysit people with no ambition to live and who are slowly k*lling themselves by self-destruction?
Do you feel like your are intellectually engaged in the work or that you have to only be a sort of vessel to a mess and misery you're obligated to handle?
Is the experience that I shared here one that is familiar to you and that ressembles your day to day work? Do you feel like this is the kind of dead-end job that you could get stuck in with your diploma, especially if you have mouths to feed at home?
Please be the most truthful you can in your answers, that would be very helpful to me, thank you ❤️
This experience was a big wake-up call and reality check for me, as it reinforced the idea that my way of helping people might be more intellectual (as I have been writing a philosophy book for three years now), and that my work is not to "fix" or treat people but to analyze our society and to guide us towards more wisdom and ways of living more attuned to our needs. By building intentional and ecological communities for example. But then again, *how* do I make money out of that while still in the writing process...Or even how to be a successful writer and to live off of that with the rise of AI and intense competition between writers.
I'm also way too much of an introvert and a hypersensitive person to have to bare all of that havoc everyday, it would absolutely break me.
Thank you for having read my post here and for helping me, I really appreciate it 🙏❤️ Wishing you a great day or night 🤗✨