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Crossing boundaries
I am a 30 year old mother of 3.
My son has had a TSS worker, (Therapeutic Staff Support) for a little over a year now. This TSS worker cross many professional boundaries, and it evolved into what I felt was a friendship. She was a great support for me in so many ways; in both a personal level and a professional level. There was times when I just cried and cried, and she listened. We shared many phone conversations. The problem is now she has left us as a TSS, and has taken on a supervisor’s role.
Things have happened since she is in the new role, and I feel as if she has stabbed me in the back. I talked to her yesterday, and even though she wants to talk with me outside of the professional side of services. She feels that she can no longer do it. She wants to go back to being strictly professional. This leaves me without that much needed friend. How do I personally deal with this loss? How do I go back to dealing with her on a professional level?
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Well I think that your friend has more responsbility now, and more to loose if she crosses that line. She is under more pressure to act professionally. IT is like she is under a microscope now. Her relationship with you before, as you said, crossed boundaries, that she was able to cross in her former position. She cannot take that chance now. I now you feel this on a personal level, but I don't think it is personal with her. It is professional. After all, long before she met you, she had goals. All her work to this point was geared towards reaching those goals.
The other thing is that she was your son's TSS worker. She was there to support him, you turned it into a life support for yourself. This was bound to happen, as that is not her job. Her job is to work with children. Which also involves parents, but not on the level that she was providing to you.
She did you a diservice by crossing those boundaries, because you became too dependent on her. That was not her job, her job was to help you find the courage and strenght to help yourself. Give you the tools so to speak and then run with it. I wonder if you did not take advantage of her rather than grow yourself.
I know it is hard, I raised two boys by myself. Any help at all, and understanding was always welcome, but in the end, I knew it could only be me that was ultimatly responsbile for raising these kids with their problems, and all of mine.
Time does go by, and people do grow. You just have to outlast the hard times, and you are doing a good job. Keep it up. That does not mean that you should look for some help from professionals.
If you can't see your way to benefiting from this relationship even if it is on a more pofessional level. Ask her if she can assign someone else. Ask her for a recommmenation, or find someone on your own. Just be aware, these people are their for guidance, not to be a crutch.
I know it is very hard to be a parent, especially when there are other problems to make things harder. Like emotional problems, disabilities, etc. But the best parents are the ones that divev in and just say, hey I am going to do my best, and while I know I am going to make mistakes, they are my mistakes to make, but in the end, if it is all down out of love my kids will be oK.
I hope that you find the strength and confidence you need to finish this work. Your kids are depending on you. If nothing else you learned a lot from this woman. It is time for you to put the things you learned in practice. Good results will help you gain more confidence in yourself and the task at hand. Good luck to you dear.
Michele
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Talk to your friend again. If she was your shoulder to cry on for so long, why would she suddenly turn her back on you? Possible reasons could be cruel, like she feels to good to be mingling with you at a higher position she holds, or hidden reasons, such as she feels to pressured under her new job that she can't deal with other peoples problems such as yourself, or there are things going on with her at home that she isn't comfortable sharing. I don't think it's platonic that she just wants to stop your friendship.
Invite her out to dinner, just you two, to celebrate her promotion (write her a letter if she refuses). Maybe you can find out if there is something bothering her, or start a new tradition of a friendship outside of the work place if not.
If she really wants to end your friendship without proper explanation, that is her choice. It is a painful loss, but know that she is the one with the problem, not you. Try out reaching to fellow co workers, and making a new friendship, a more dependable one. There is no easy way to deal with the loss of a friend, but it will get better over time.
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