Whilst on one hand 2023 has been a year of prosperity within my work and income it has also been met with some difficulties. I have found working entirely online to be quite an extreme experience.
Keeping fairly irregular hours has been reward at times, affording me opportunities such as going out to the gym during the course of the day, doing other thing but I have spent a tremendous time "glued" to my computer. On a busy day I often rarely move from my desk or leave the room I'm in, except to use the toilet or get something to eat.
I have no real colleagues anymore either, although I do work with a team of people I do not converse with them at all really, we use slack and there are meeting calls but it is completely de-personalised. However, when working within rehabs it was not without many faults, the rehab industry in Thailand and outside of Thailand is a rather rickety hodge-podge affair.
There's an old saying, if you like sausages and justice, pray you'll never see how either is made. The same can be said about rehabs, dangerously incompetent support staff, exploitative and manipulative managers, shady financiers and just out-right incredibly disordered staff members who are accountable to no one and fail to comply with any supervision.
That's the side of rehabs I don't miss. The amount of money I'm owed from unpaid expenses and wages runs nearly to a bill in excess of £10,000. Training usually comes out of your owe pocket with a means to you pay you later, which never happens, flights around the country to obtain visas are often never reimbursed, last wages are often short or fail to be delivered at all.
The UK was not a far-cry from the wild-wild east. The levels of incompetent mis-management and complete lack of care towards staff members was staggering. I have no shame in naming the institutions that made my life very difficult, in particular "The Cardinal Hume Centre", they didn't care about anything but raising money through their funding team.
They were a Catholic based organisation in Westminster London, the staff serving there were mostly keen on sucking up to legacy funding from rich philanthropists and Catholics in the nearby area.
The job was a complete mess, from day one I was hired I was told that I was not going to receive any supervision - which pretty puts a counsellor on a collision course to burn-out or resignation. I was 26 years old at the time (2010) and I was quite concerned about the recession and decay of the United Kingdom, which has since accelerated tremendously. So, I was wiling to become a "yes man" to gain experience and foot-holding in order to craft myself.
There were some kindly members of staff there who were indeed decent people and some of the services they did provide there did have a positive impact on the community, but the staggering level of just lack of concern for the well-being of the staff was outrageous from the management!
Again, as well they also owe me money from unpaid work. Upon leaving the Cardinal Hume Centre, I was not in a position to sue them and unfortunately statue of limitations now makes any attempt to strike back at them muted.
But live and learn.
I was recently asked by someone if I could go back in time would I go down the same career path. I had to stop and really think carefully about the answer, I enjoy counselling, my life has been successful, I've been in media for my work, I've traveled the world with my work, I have a relatively comfortable life and I have found the work I've done to be incredibly rewarding at times. For me I don't think there could have been any other way.
I wouldn't really advise anyone young to study counselling or psychology today, it's simply too poorly paid for a job that requires post graduate qualifications. You can easily earn more money in semi-skilled work that you can either receive for free off the government or costs very little to self-train. I recently saw a position I held within a job in London now paying 27% less than what I was earning 13 years ago, factoring in the rise in cost of living, travel costs, inflation and fuel bills, a very conservative guess is that you'd be roughly at least 60% poorer - the reality might be much worse.
University education I don't really hold much esteems for either, once places of actually learning a craft and skill, have now seeming sunken into a battlefield of ideology and placements seem to be more concerned about the colour of your skin, and how un-anglicized your name is, rather than your will or aptitude to study and learn.
I didn't come to work in this field to walk off with a bag of riches, I came with a personal manifesto of wishing to help evoke and change and make a real impact. However, I can't just self-sacrifice in order to do so. Nor should anyone, it's a known hall-mark of a bad-counsellor, the wounded-healer.
I think if you have a keen interest in the mind and how psychology can be applied to bettering a person's life, you'd be much better off going down the route of employment assistant programs, running course within a corporations or inventing some form of business for yourself. However, opportunities like that are quite rare.
The unfortunate reality is that people who want to do genuinely do good are prayed upon by the greedy and exploitative. This is seen in most levels, the government have hacked and slashed treatment programs to death, leading only those who wish to fulfill a life of servitude and poverty equal to that of a monk on a vow of destitution. Private companies are not too far behind.
I think the best option for any in any institution, if you're in a country like the United Kingdom join a union immediately and hold your work immediately accountable to requirements such as supervision, if you're owed money or "TOIL" refuse to work until it is met. You have every right to do so. A union - SHOULD - provide you with some legal aide.
If you're working in private sector, don't play along with misdeeds or mistreatment, immediate cease operations or contact the employment offices within your country where you're being employed. If your employer can't afford to pay for visas, training, overtime, monthly wages then they seriously need to re-evaluate their position to run or operate within the care-business. These are ultimately RED-FLAGS and no good will ever come from working for a company that displays this kind of behaviour. They are are either too incompetent, don't care or they're in serious financial difficulty. Whatever reason it's not going to be a good outcome!
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