youre an outlier. an anomaly. you have to admit most people do not live that way, and many that do dont want to.
they are just doing their job based on the numbers, and there is no reason to take it personally.
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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It's the taking it personally part I don't understand. I say I'm fine, I don't need any help. Have a nice day. That should be the end of it.
I doubt they're taking it personally. A lot of people who very much do need help say the same thing you did, and they don't know you. All they know is that you're unhoused and refusing assistance.
I would suggest framing your position in a different way. Maybe start by acknowledging that others may not choose this lifestyle but that you do it willingly and explain why you prefer it. You're coming across defensively in this thread and if you're also coming across that way in your communications with social workers I can see why they might not believe that your lifestyle is a choice.
Could be. I'll work on that. I tend to get a little annoyed when I'm offered unsolicited help I guess.
“Thank you for reaching out! I really appreciate the gesture. However I’m very happy to inform you that I’m living a carefully considered and crafted life that I truly enjoy, and wouldn’t change a thing about it. So just mark me down as a ‘Happy Nomad’ and we’re all set! Oh, no thank you. Please save your paperwork / handouts for someone that truly needs your help. Thank you again for stopping by…”
Acknowledged their time, update their records, refuse to waste paper, and show them the door with thank you.
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Let me give you a related example that should shed light on their stubbornness...
If someone gets in an accident and hits their head, they might have a concussion. How can you tell? Basic first responder training says to ask several questions. What we don't ask is, "Are you OK?" because the patient will say "yes" even when they aren't OK. It's answers to the other questions that give us enough information to get a sense of whether our help is needed.
It's quite possible that some social workers are acting in a similar fashion to first responders here. They want the details because their checklist is longer than yours. (There are other reasons that social workers might be annoying, as others have explained, too.)
That doesn't negate your frustration, but maybe it helps you understand one cause.
Social workers are typically people who love to help people, it gives their life meaning and purpose. They have helped numerous people in rough situations get a comfortable living situation and have no further need of assistance and every time they are over the moon with joy for what they have been able to do for that person.
They meet people who genuinely need help that they can provide and are turned down because of pride/humiliation. Some of those people just need them to be persistent for their help to be accepted.
It must be so soul crushing and demoralizing to have someone you believe you can help tell you to take it on the arches.
While you don't need their help and are happy living as you do, they think you do need their help and won't accept it. Your radical freedom breaks their well-meaning, but misguided, hearts.
I'm not trying to crush anybody.
You are just trying to live your life and it is so unimaginable an existence that it is incongruous with their concept of a comfortable life.
There is nothing wrong with your life, so long as you are happy and healthy. There is nothing wrong with their concept of a comfortable life. Both are shaped by notions derrived from life experience and personal prioritizations and either party cannot hold the other to be worthwhile without a greater understanding of the individual.
Hurting someone else's feelings is an unavoidable truth in living a radically different path that they do not understand.
The best you can do for them is to try and help them see that their path is not the only one. Help them to understand your needs are met and you respect their path.
Next time, you can try to help them understand that they can offer nothing of value that will make your life better for you and give them an opportunity to understand you are whole in your path. Ask them what they want your life to be like, what your life is lacking, what they can do for you, and address each of their points with salient and cogent arguments that express your contention in your life's circumstances.
If their best efforts have no value to you, help them understand that, if you don't want to hurt their well intentioned efforts.
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For a lot of people it's difficult to understand that anyone would genuinely prefer not living in a house. The word homeless does not give the best connotations after all.
You can insist you're fine, but men tend to do that anyway. The social worker might have grown up in bad conditions with a father insisting he's fine and refusing to receive help, for all we know. There's several reasons they could take it personally. And men who refuse to receive help when they need it can be frustrating to watch - chances are you're wrongfully considered part of that category.
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Living in an SUV is often the first step to really needing their help. Housing insecurity is a quick road to pretty rough living. If you are in their system, in their eyes, they can actually act quickly and help you when the likely next step happens. Not being in the system is pretty slow to get help in most places.
There are a lot of nomads and van dwellers living in dispersed camping spots, traveling the country and enjoying the outdoors. We even have meetups. Others like me leave the sites better than we found them and follow all the rules. Everyone I've met so far is happy living this way. I know it seems strange, but enjoying the outdoors and not having to pay bills is wonderful to me and I get to choose solitude or community however I please. It's a very free way to live.
Oh yeah, I totally get the lifestyle. Done enough overloading to really appreciate the lifestyle. But I'm trying to explain things from their point of view. Even if now, you are in control and everything is going according to your plans, they see trouble in months if not years when those plans abruptly change. They know how most people got from point A to point B and are now sleeping in shelters or dark corners of "civilization".
I guess from this perspective I can see that point. The last one I talked to was actually arguing with me about it and was upset when she left, I don't understand that. I wasn't confrontational with her. I just simply said I'm fine I don't really need any help have a nice day. I thought I was pretty calm. I guess it was probably just her.
She was probably a bit overzealous I'm thinking, yeah. But that is a thankless job with low pay and little success. I give social workers a ton of latitude. I'm glad you stayed calm in the face of things.
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When I find myself becoming irked by someone offering help I don't need, it helps me to think of things in terms of people who slip through the gaps: the system that the social worker is a part of strives to help those who need it, and you not needing that help makes you a false positive. You were likely flagged because sometimes when someone is living in their vehicle, this is a symptom (and reinforcing factor) of their life being in disarray. That is to say that some people who superficially look a lot like you are in need of support, and not catching these people would be false negatives. Bonus complication is that many people who do need this help may also be resistant to support (for a variety of reasons).
Given that no system is perfect, and the error rate will always be greater than zero, we can ask the hypothetical "is it better to have fewer false positives and more false negatives, or more false positives and fewer false negatives?". Put a different way, when you're bothered, that's you slipping through the gaps in a system that has opted for more false positives with the goal of helping as many people who need it as possible.
Unrelated to everything else I said, I'm glad you've been able to find a way of living that you're happy in — it is a challenge when the life that is best suited for us is one that society considers "abnormal", so I'm happy to hear about anyone who has broken into what works.
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Some good interactions here. Cant speak to the emotional content because I wasn't present. Emotions are messy, who knows what happened between you two.
All I can say is that the relevant parties saw your conditions of living and recognized them as the risk factors that they are. You living well, and choosing that life, is a pleasant outcome. But they can't know that without doing a follow-up assessment. For all they know, you're living in your car scraping up railroad spikes to buy today's heroin.
Highly disagree with the advice to lie to your doctor. As long as you are not a danger to others, making explicit threats to harm yourself, or harming a child, and as long as you're following the laws, then they can't force you to get services.
Next time, just tell them that you've already been assessed and were found to not be at risk. And if someone stops by, be friendly... they're doing a really hard job that puts a lot of good into the world for a lot of people. Take any pamphlets they got cuz it might be useful knowledge. Educate yourself, etc. And keep on truckin! Thanks for the post.
Where do you shower? Do you have a job? If not, how do you get food, money for gas etc.?
I'm not OP, but a previous car life enjoyer. I would shower at planet fitness, did doordash for a living, and I slept in Walmart parking lots, truck stops, and any bureau of land management managed land.
I got food by exchanging money for it...
I tell them that I'm doing fine.
That's what most/all of their clients say at first. Especially alcoholics or other addicts do not admit that they need help.
So maybe you should emphasize this point a little more, so that they believe you right from start.
And emphasize that you're not an alcoholic or an addict.
It's because most people wouldn't want to live in an SUV. If that's what you like though then more power to you! The social worker was probably upset because your doctor called them all the way out there telling them that you needed help immediately and when you said you didn't want help they felt they had wasted their time. It's really the doctor they should be mad at I guess for calling them out there for nothing
Why on earth is your doctor even allowed to share your personal situation with anyone? Did you consent to that? Else it's a quite severe violation of your privacy.
You'll flip when you find out that there are circumstances in which they are mandated by law to share your personal information. That stuff is regulated to hell, and rallying resources to help people sleeping rough is a good thing in my book. Maybe OP doesn't need the help but the other 99% of the people living on their cars are at huge risk to life. Starvation, hypothermia, malnutrition, human trafficking, prison, just to name a few.
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Shocking twist: Kintarian is 12.
Idk, I once got threatened by a doctor for admitting to marijuana use. He said he was going to report me to law enforcement. It never happened but police kicking down people's doors over suspected marijuana possession was definitely a thing that happened a few times in that town. The mayor even started a brawl with some medical marijuana picketers once.
Weird. I've never had a doctor that gave a shit about marijuana use.
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I blame this mostly on the doctor. The doctor should've asked you if you wanted to speak with someone about your situation, but lots of doctors prefer to just make decisions for people rather than ask.
The rest of the blame lies with the social worker, who sounds like a bad social worker. Active listening is Social Work 101, and it sounds like she didn't do that.
Maybe your doctor's office is full of people who are bad at their jobs. I recommend against extrapolating anything about these professions as a whole from your two experiences there.
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It's clear by your post and comments that you're living in a SUV due to your lifestyle, not due to deprivation.
So let's get practical:
- Don't mention to doctors that you live in a SUV; if possible/reasonable to do so, lie.
- If you must mention it, let clear that you live in it out of a conscious choice, it's your lifestyle, and you don't want social workers bugging you.
- If a social worker pops up, highlight the fact that you're being buggered over and over by social workers, and that you do not want to change your lifestyle.
Beyond that, it is not your problem any more. And that includes their emotional state.
Now, on why they do it. Frankly, I don't know, but if I had to guess:
A lot of people who desire to help others don't really do so because they want a better world; they do it for the sake of their own fee fees, because they want to feel like a good person who helps others out. As such, they're willing to violate the others' agency and consent and force their "help" down your throat, even if they aren't actually helping jack shit but being just a burden; and they get really pissy when you correctly highlight that they are not helping and impose some boundaries. (inb4 "but I have good intentions" - go pave Hell with them dammit.)
That is not just social workers, mind you. You see people like this in all professions and environments. However, I believe that there's a disproportionate large amount of those among social workers due to the nature of their job, simply because social work is all about helping others out.
Couple that with bureaucracy. There's a high chance that your info is in some database as "refused help". Guess how someone who, unlike you, needs and wants help but declines it due to pride would get into that database? "Refused help". So the next social worker checking your entry will see it as someone who potentially might want and need help.
Any social worker who violates your agency and consent is in breach of their legal obligations and should be reported to their state board. Any social worker who takes things a patient says personally, and responds from emotion based on that, is also a terrible social worker. I've been a social worker a long ass time and the people I know and work with do neither of these things.
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I would have thought that seeing a doctor should already be a "green" flag that you don't need their help. Doctors appointments are a major expense and not the thing to do if facing financial hardship and/or the possibility of homelessness due to financial reasons. Healthcare is an expense I axed a long time ago.
In a lot of the world, doctors' appointments are free or low cost
California, at least, has free health care with nearly the same requirements to qualify as food stamps. It's probably easier to get medical care here being homeless than it is if you make more money that prevents you from qualifying because it covers damn near everything and you don't pay a single cent. I didn't even use my job's insurance because I didn't make enough to stop qualifying for the state given insurance and I'd have to give up $300 out of every check to use the one given by my employer. I barely made $400 each check.
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I'm gonna be honest with you, there's probably some red flags that your doctor saw that perhaps you're unaware of. You say living in your van is a choice; are you being honest with yourself about that? Are you actually taking care of your hygiene this way?
Because one red flag I'm seeing is a van-dweller making a doctor's appointment in the first place. Usually nomadic/hermitic people (as in, those who choose to live off the grid and aren't doing so as a matter of circumstance) generally don't go to the doctor, unless something is really wrong. So for you to show up in a doctor's office at all is already anomalous in the first place.
It shouldn't be understated just how important basic things like access to clean running water can be. And you're using the words "van" and "SUV", and not "RV" or "motorhome", which leads me to believe that you aren't taking care of some basic needs.
If you're truly taking care of yourself and being healthy, then more power to ya; I'm honestly a little jealous of those who can live that life. But if you're actually struggling, you should probably consider taking a look at the paperwork they gave you. Don't get pride get in the way of getting help.
I have clean clothes, I go to the laundry regularly, I have a portable shower, I have a portable toilet. I brushed my teeth, I clean my body, I get exercise everyday, I try to eat a low fat high fiber diet.
I had to have my gallbladder removed
So you're a little older, on a fixed income, don't have a support system nearby, don't have a place you can stay that has dedicated bathroom facilities or even room to stand up indoors, and you just had a not-insignificant surgery that comes with, at a minimum, laparoscopic incisions, and could significantly affect the way your body processes its diet.
You may well be doing fine, but I'm not calling out either the doctor or the social worker here. Pushing you a little and making you insist you're happy was a reasonable call.
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