‘I currently work with a man called Dean. He is young and vulnerable, with a lifelong history of abuse, neglect and exploitation. He has very high support needs and is very challenging to work with; a lot of the decisions he makes appear to be very unwise ones, and this can make him very difficult and frustrating to work with.
I sometimes hesitate to justify these types of behaviours by saying that a person has experienced trauma and abuse. I know that some people see the link between the two, and I also realise that some people see this as an excuse and feel that services who seek to acknowledge this and provide emotional support to address these issues are prolonging the problem and providing justification for these behaviours to continue. Personally, I don’t agree with this latter view at all, and I will explain why.
Dean’s start to life was bad. He was born to abusive and neglectful parents. The only emotion he experienced from a parent or carer was a negative one. He was never nurtured; he never got to grow in an environment where he learned how to treat people or how to be properly treated. These are essential life skills that we all learn in our formative years, but unfortunately for Dean, his life-skill learning was all about the negative, the abusive and the exploitative. Imagine that this had been your own up-bringing, and that you were left to your own devices in life from an early age; you would have to find a way to cope and survive, and with only negative tools in the box to achieve this, your choices and coping techniques might not look so great to the outside world.
Part of Dean’s neglect as a child was that he was locked alone in a room for hours, sometimes days on end. As a result, this had led to Dean becoming a young man who craves company – any company. He never experienced positive companionship, so for him now, choosing bad company is very much “better the devil you know”.
Dean has a place at a supported accommodation project, but spends very little time there. He often spends nights in a squat, and sometimes stays with another friend. I say friend, but this friend is very abusive physically and emotionally. Dean tends to go there only as a last resort and always regrets it when the experience ends in him being assaulted and having his money taken from him.
I recently had a chat with Dean because I am concerned for his safety at times when he makes these choices. He told me that he does this because he feels safer in other company. This confused me, because the choice of company puts him at significantly greater risk of harm than being alone. Dean went on to explain that as a child, being locked away was frightening. He never knew if someone would let him out, or if someone would be coming to hit him or worse, or even if anyone knew he was there. He said that he realises that his current choices are risky, but that the thought of being alone in his room where he lives is just too much to bear.
Deans choices make so much more sense to me now, and the fact that I can recognise this helps me to support him to address these thoughts and look for a way forward. Hopefully, together we can find a way for Dean to feel more comfortable with his own company, and to find a way to develop positive relationships rather than feeling that anyone is better than no one.