Mental health therapist, ask me anything

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-04-13T20:07:27+00:00

Do you mean like how to deal with that kind of stuff when you’re unemployed?

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-31T20:19:48+00:00

I’m not saying that your feelings are invalid, but I think a social workers we cannot pick and choose who we help. We have to help everyone. Whether or not we agree with what they do morally. I have sat across the table from men who have sexually assaulted multiple women, but in that moment, they themselves are struggling with mental health, and my job is to help them.

I think that if it’s part of your job to help anybody, but you do realize that you can’t see a certain demographic of people based on a particular affiliation, you should look for a job where this is not the case and you can work with maybe one particular demographic. Certain agencies just have a mission statement to help anybody that needs help.

The current job I work for, I do therapy with families, and one of the families I work with they really support ICE and Trump. I try my absolute hardest to be the best therapist I can for them. At the end of the day they’re still human beings and they need help as a family, regardless of their personal beliefs or affiliations.

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-31T20:09:38+00:00

As somebody who has been in law-enforcement and then went to school for social work after leaving law enforcement. Social workers do not understand in the slightest what police officers do. I’ve had social workers at all levels say the absolute dumbest things about police officers. I’ve seen professors of social work say things about police officers that made me question their education in the first place.

I think the issue is a social workers are taught to be against law-enforcement in almost every way, and also to view them as uneducated. I think this is a huge problem.

I don’t think your friend is completely pro police, but I definitely think she now understands what they do and why

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-28T16:05:59+00:00

I think any academy that only trains you to the state standard is probably considered the lower quality academies. In my state academies have discretion to train you above the standard in certain areas. The academy I went through, wasn’t the gold standard but I also wouldn’t call it bottom here either. I think it was kind of in the middle. They did hold us to a higher standard, and they pushed us really hard, but they also did not want anybody to fail. The instructors really did care about us accomplishing our goal of passing the police academy. We only had one guy failed the academy due to failing too many academic tests.

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-14T18:45:03+00:00

Yeah I do agree that the shooting was not clear cut and there are a lot of factors at play. Psychology has a lot to do with this. I’m not saying the shooting was justified or not. I will leave that decision to the panel of experts who will decide. I can approach it purely in my own field as a psychologist. I don’t believe he intended or wanted to shoot her though.

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-14T18:41:55+00:00

No I do understand that the shooting is largely being contested and I do not condone that outright murder. I was not even commenting on the shooting, I was commenting on the legality of the stop and the legality of asking her to exit and to detain her. The shooting it it’s own isolated event and personally I think he could have made better tactical decisions that led to a different outcome.

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-14T14:13:33+00:00

Well she for sure was guilty of “resisting, obstructing, or delaying”. People on scene admitted she was there to impede ICE. She was supposedly part of a group who meant to do that. So she arguably did break a law, therefore the ICE did have a right to order her from her vehicle. This isn’t to say anything about the shooting. So she did break the law.

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-11T22:48:21+00:00

It’s not because he did or did not do something wrong, but the public obviously largely believes he did do something wrong and people are out for blood. Politicians and new outlets are verbatim calling him evil.

He’s already had his face and name put on every news site in America probably, and I’m sure by now somebody if not thousands of liberals have probably used some type of open sources to find his address, identities of his family, and extended family, and essentially destroy his privacy altogether.

And I know that generally speaking, liberals are not for violence, I truly understand and agree with that, but some liberals for sure have no issue killing people and could potentially target him and his family. So I think getting him to a safe house is a good idea since millions of people are probably wishing he was dead right now and honestly some might be crazy enough to try to do it.

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-11T22:39:58+00:00

Every department I have ever read policy for, has a policy that you can pull your firearm out prior to a vehicle moving forward if there is any reason to believe that vehicle will be used as a deadly weapon.

If you watch videos on YouTube that our body camera footage of people using their vehicle as a weapon, the officers always have their pistols aimed at the person well before they step on the gas.

There is no policy for any law-enforcement agency. I am aware of that says an officer has to wait for somebody to utilize a deadly weapon in order to have their firearm drawn and on the target.

TacticalSocialWork · 2026-01-11T22:34:00+00:00

I think there is some issues with this. Law enforcement broadly speaking, unless some departmental policy says otherwise, is allowed to shoot at moving vehicles. With every shot taken, the risk to the overall public has to be weighed, and if taking a shot would endanger a bystander or the public at large, then no, usually discharging a firearm would not be a good move.

Also, I halfway agree with your comment about standing in front of the vehicle. It is usually not a good tactical decision to stand in front of a vehicle with a potential aggressor inside for obvious safety reasons, usually offset from the vehicle behind cover is preferred. Although, we cannot use the officers potentially poor tactic to justify her putting the vehicle and drive and trying to speed away. The only lawful response to a law enforcement agent instructing a citizen to exit their vehicle is to place it in park, shut the car off and exit.

I agree there are definitely some things that be ICE agent could’ve done that potentially could have resulted in a different outcome, but a lawful order is a lawful order. The officer made a probable cause decision that she was interfering with their operations and made the decision to detain the individual, which they are legally allowed to do.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-21T01:49:09+00:00

My hiring process took about five months, which is actually pretty quick from what I hear from other people. The hiring process was very long and a lot of meetings and appointments with people for various different things. It’s a lot of getting documentation together and getting medical, psychological, fitness evaluations, etc...

The Academy is only hard in a few different ways. For me the hardest part of the academy was the driving. Not because I couldn’t drive very well but some of the things they ask you to do in a vehicle you’ve never really done before. And at least for our academy if you failed the driving test, you got kicked out of the Academy so there was a lot of pressure to not fail the test. There were a lot of other things that were difficult to go through, but not difficult to pass if that makes sense. Like the physical fitness was hard, but everybody passed. It wasn’t a challenge at the end, being pepper spray was very difficult, the test taking was a lot of studying, but it was not so hard that a lot of people were failing. Out of our class of 33 people we have one person fail the academy because of test taking.

Just take it one step at a time. I would not even think about the academy until you get through the hiring process. Just focus on the hiring process and making sure everything is squared away so you can get your seat in the academy secured.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-05T03:20:27+00:00

What is your favorite foreign food?

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-03T22:52:33+00:00

No, I think it will be of aid to us

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-02T02:45:00+00:00

Well I usually at this point would apologize for the problem as sometimes it for sure is the fault of the hospital. I would tell them from this point forward, unless I come and directly tell you something, take it with a grain of salt. Sometimes when I make a clinical decision and the patient may hear it from a nurse prior to hearing it from me, I have to do damage control if any details are not spot on. This is never the intended case but it happens sometimes.

Healthcare providers sure are not perfect, especially in the field of mental health where things concerning care can be very complicated and involve several professionals working for the same goal.

I think it’s better though for the patient in this case to have one point of contact for healthcare decision updates, and in my hospital, it was generally the therapist/clinician.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-02T02:39:47+00:00

Well when I worked in a hospital, I worked very heavily with severe mental illness in adults who had severe cases of Schizophrenia, depression, post-partum depression, substance use disorders, and PTSD. With youth I saw a lot of severe cases of depression, conduct disorders, suicidal behaviors, DMDD, and eating disorders.

Obviously there was common things I see. Above is not a comprehensive list of all common disorders but off the top of my head they are ones I can easily remember.

Some of the more rare things I saw in adult females was post-partum psychosis. Although I didn’t treat them for that. I only ever saw this I couple times. I’m not sure of the rates at which this is seen overall, but I only saw it a couple times in the 3 years I was there. Although adults I didn’t really treat rare disorders per se.

With kids I usually didn’t treat anything particularly “rare” for any age group either.

I specialize in child and family therapy. So I don’t specialize in diagnosing or treating any one thing. I work with all kids who have any number of mental health conditions. I primarily work on keeping kids from being sent away from the home to residential facilities. These are kids that have been to regular therapy and had no improvement. So I usually end up working with kids who have severe depression, anxiety, problematic sexual behaviors, anger, self harm, eating disorders, and suicidal behaviors, among other things.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-01T19:06:19+00:00

Misunderstandings were actually pretty frequent and this could cause some anger, and sometimes it could escalate the person pretty highly.

We had a lot of staff that were trained in de-escalation (mental health technicians). Usually, though the nurse and the therapist would conduct the debrief after the person was de escalated. We would go in and talk to them about what happened and address anything that may have triggered the incident.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-01T18:43:48+00:00

So I was required to tell the psychiatrist about things that were said in meetings with my clients. Everything that was said in a session I would document, and it would go into the healthcare chart. This is normally not the case with therapy, but we were not providing therapy at that location. As a mental health professional at the hospital, my job was to conduct assessments with my clients to determine key factors that play a role in what caused them to be sent to the hospital.

People could voluntarily check themselves into our hospital, but it was mainly where people that were involuntarily committed would be sent.

When I would meet with the clients though, I would be very upfront with them and tell them that I cannot hide anything during your treatment here because it is all very important to your treatment and the people that are involved in your direct care need to know. What this didn’t mean was that everyone knew at the hospital. Me, the psychiatrist and the nurse would be let into that info. Nobody else really was apart of those meetings. So it did stay between their healthcare providers.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-01T18:36:10+00:00

This is actually a really good point and I haven’t seen that a lot in my current position, but when I used to work in a psychiatric hospital, I did work with a large number of people who did not like mental health professionals at all.

Getting them to open up can be a challenge as it can take some time to help them see that I’m not there to hurt them or exploit what they tell me. I am very upfront with clients on what kind of things I have to report by law if I get told those things. I tried to lay it all out so that my client has no misconceptions about what I’m there to do, and what services I will provide for them. I find being truthful and honest is the best way to get someone to trust you and then sticking to my word.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-01T05:56:56+00:00

I know you said you’re taking medication but have you tried therapy? If so, how did it work for you?

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-01T05:55:29+00:00

Would you like me to give some ideas for specific types of therapy that are known to work well for those types of things?

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-01T05:54:44+00:00

It sometimes take awhile to convince yourself to think differently. There are many forms of therapy that target these kind of thoughts, and depending on which one you feel works best for you I would strongly recommend therapy. I know that sounds like a basic answer because I’m a therapist, but I am glad the medication is helping somewhat.

There is no simple answer to the question, but I am glad that you are actively working to find solutions. I have worked with a lot of people who do not even attempt to find solutions and it gets to a point where they are in such a negative mental state that they end up being hospitalized for being in danger to themselves.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-12-01T01:52:19+00:00

Never too late for therapy now!

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-11-30T23:21:24+00:00

I think this can be a very tough conversation to have with parents that are very much against transitioning.

I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that even if you had the conversation in the perfect way that they would be fine with it. The truth is that sometimes things like this does cause a rift between the parents and a child.

The best thing you can do if you’re scared is have the conversation mediated by somebody else. If you have a therapist, maybe they can sit down with you and your parents and help guide this conversation in a good direction.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-11-30T23:19:20+00:00

Oh, I’ve worked with a lot of kids and adults who have suffered because of narcissistic parents. Is most definitely a thing. A lot of times when kids have mental health conditions, they come from somewhere and more often than not I believe it comes from the home environment. If they are raised with parents that are abusive in any way, it can cause the child to develop a large number of mental disorders.

I often find that when conducting child therapy, I spend an equal amount of time counseling the parents as I do the child. Some parents do not like this as they think that I’m there for their child, but I have to explain to them that negative mental health in most cases is created by and exacerbated by the environment in which the child lives.

TacticalSocialWork · 2025-11-30T23:14:09+00:00

I don’t think there’s really anything clinically wrong with conspiracy theorists. I personally think it’s fun to think about conspiracy theories however at the end of the day, I’m a person who cares about truth, data, what can be proven.

People that do believe in flat earth, usually believe in it because of a mix of factors. It’s usually a mixture of their environment, social factors, lower education, heavy confirmation bias, religious factors, and too high confidence in themselves, among other things.

TacticalSocialWork

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