My Social Work Career and Political Journey
Let's just say I'm not your typical "Right Wing Extremist"
Some people wonder, how did I become “The Truthful Therapist”?
I have an interesting story: I went to college in 1992, and ended up becoming a sociology major because I liked the classes. Back then, academia was at the earlier stages of indoctrination, and I was part of the first generation who learned all about woke. I thought I was special, enlightened and evolved as I learned this new point of view. I was taught that my life is harder as a woman and read books like “The Second Shift, Working Families and the Revolution at Home” by Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung, and several books by Bell Hooks, who is known for writing about race, intersectionality and feminism, and studied “The Bluest Eye”, by Toni Morrison which reinforced white guilt. I was part of the first generation who learned about my “white privilege”, long before this was a term anyone else had heard of.
I grew up in a typical New Jersey suburb in a reformed Jewish family, going to summer camps that idealized the Israeli kibbutz model. (Kibbutzim are mini communist communities that have mostly disappeared nowadays, because it turns out that communism doesn't work so well). I noticed the disparities between where I came from and the New York inner city neighborhoods I later ended up spending a lot of time in as a social worker. I was taught in school there was injustice, with no specific explanations, but injustice nonetheless. And although I didn’t understand all of the specific reasons, my irrational feelings of white guilt took effect and I wanted to be a part of the solution, to help people. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree because I’m from a liberal family. My mother is a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal” and my father has similar tendencies. As you can see, my upbringing and background hardly qualifies me as a right wing redneck, yet ironically, this is how I’m often perceived today.
I lived most of my my life politically inactive. I voted at major elections, but I wasn’t much more involved than that. I honestly didn’t pay much attention to politics. As a social worker, I spent about five years of my career visiting families in the projects in Bronx and Brooklyn. My “white savior” complex wasn’t too strong, because I still believed that people need to be motivated to make their own choices. I knew I couldn’t control other people and I never tried. I made meaningful bonds with many of those families. Some former clients are still connected to the agency I worked for and every once in a while, over 20 years later, I still hear from some of them. I wanted to make a difference and I did, but not because of my “magic” social work powers, but because I believed in my clients’ personal responsibility, and I never treated anyone like a victim. I also prayed with them, at their request. Personally, I’m not very religious, but I recognize the power of faith and knew how healing prayer is for so many people. (I didn’t realize at the time that these are all conservative values)
I didn’t realize personal responsibility was a conservative value before.
This was a different time, because in the 90’s and early 2000’s, racial tensions were not like they are today. Despite my light skin, I walked confidently through the NYC project neighborhoods because the community soon figured out that I was “good people”. I was greeted by the local drug dealers daily, and in some circumstances, they protected me.
After 9/11, I struggled with burn-out and I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area of California for a fresh start. I moved to a small, relatively unknown, town called Mountain View for quiet and sunshine. It was like a ghost town in the aftermath of the dot com crash. Little did I know that this city would turn into the headquarters for a little company named Google.
During the short break from my social work life, I worked as a bartender. Despite the fun I was having as a bartender, I was soon itching to get back to my social work roots and I got into the group home/child welfare sector. In my new position, I met many teens with trauma and attachment issues and provided counseling and structure for them. I worked in all levels of group homes, including a locked facility that required physical restraints due to the level of emotional disturbances. I found I had a knack for working with teens who acted out because I provided a good balance of compassion, truth and structure.
My career started to focus more on mental health social work. I worked in a variety of settings for teens and young adults with mental health issues like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression, PTSD, etc. This was before Tik Tok and Instagram existed, and before it became trendy to have a mental health diagnosis. Many of these clients suffered greatly and worked hard to put the pieces of their life back together after a mental breakdown. I was teaching classes on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and also leading creative therapy modalities, such as poetry and drama therapy. There were doctors on site who monitored and tweaked medications carefully and collaboratively with the clients, me and the rest of the treatment team. For context, This was in 2008-2011, and as you can hear, the quality of mental health care was much higher at this time. No would would even fathom doing treatment via zoom with such a vulnerable population, as it is commonly done today.
After this phase in my career, I moved up to be a clinical supervisor, where I helped younger unlicensed therapists gain their clinical hours that would lead to their licensure. I became responsible for their caseloads and helped them with clinical crisis. Most of this experience was in Bay area schools, which spanned from San Francisco to Los Gatos. I enjoyed being a part of school-based counseling and helping school staff manage emotional issues that got in the way of classroom learning. I also really enjoyed being a mentor to so many talented and passionate counselors. However, I had heavy responsibilities with relatively low pay and poor benefits, so after 10 years I moved on to the job I thought would be my final destination. Finally, I landed a good salaried position at UCSF in the adult outpatient mental health program. This was in 2016, and the beginning of my “political awakening”.
Perhaps it was because I was in the heart of San Francisco, or perhaps it was my misfortune of being around these specific therapists who were politically divisive, but it was working at UCSF that started to show me that people on the left aren’t as open and tolerant as they claim to be. This was the year Trump was unexpectedly elected. Full disclosure, I did not vote for him, but I also did not have animosity towards those who did. My co-workers were unproductive the day Trump’s presidency was announced because they spent a large portion of the day gathered around a computer screen and crying—I’m talking full-on sobbing, not just a tear or two. I found this to be unprofessional and an over-reaction. I also noticed how judgmental they were of clients who did not hold their political views. For example, there was a client who suffered from a brain injury after being deployed to Afghanistan. In one of the therapy exercises, a clinician prompted the patients to name a role model. This particular client named Ronald Regan as his role model. I was shocked at how disrespectful the therapists treated him. It didn’t stop there because in the private clinical review meeting after the session, the therapists continued to be condescending about the fact this patient admired former president Ronald Reagan.
My personal story took an unfortunate turn and I soon came down with a very serious and rare disability. Months of pain turned into years and I dropped out of that UCSF job in 2017. In fact, I essentially dropped out of life for many years because I was spending most of my time navigating doctors who didn’t listen or understand my condition. Plus, my energy was focused on managing severe nerve pain, not politics and culture. Needless to say, I was not involved in any political discourse during those Trump years. I spent a lot of time in bed and was not working in my profession during the period that these institutions moved further left. I had minimal social contact because leaving the house was a painful endeavor. One woman who I once believed was a close friend came to visit. I thought she came because she cared, but instead, she was there to recruit me to attend the " Women’s Pussy Hat March". I could barely tie my shoes at the time, but she judged me for not wanting to attend the rally. I haven’t talked to her since. My life came to a screeching halt.
It took me years to figure out what my disability was and how to treat it. After two risky surgeries and lots of painful physical therapy, I finally got much of my functioning back. (I even had a rib removed!)
When did I finally start to be more functional? March of 2020.
Just when I was ready to re-enter society after a disability, society shut down.
I experienced the lockdowns differently than most because not much changed for me. While I was out of work, most of my friends were living their active lives without me and I got used to it. Two weeks “to stop the spread” were just two normal weeks in my disabled life. However, I wasn’t going to let the shutdowns stop me and I was determined to make 2020 my comeback year. I was filled with gratitude that my symptoms were now more manageable. But the world had gone mad. Lockdowns were in full effect and soon after all of our major cities went up in flames in the name of “social justice”. Everyone I know virtue signaled with a black square. This was the beginning of my true awakening and it hasn’t slowed down.
What fully opened my eyes? The reaction from my so-called friends who were too busy to check in with me for the years I was isolated and recovering from two very painful surgeries, but they all called and texted me to ensure that my Facebook wasn’t hacked because I did not support BLM publicly. My phone blew up! I still want to know, how did those black squares help anything? I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. But I also wasn’t aware of how much more leftist our culture became because I hadn’t been interacting with most people for close to four years.
It was the BLM “mostly peaceful, but fiery protests” after George Floyd’s death that red-pilled me.
After a year of lockdowns and a long on-boarding process with my new employer’s human resources department, I finally got back to work part-time at Sutter Health in San Mateo, California. (part-time work is all I can physically handle) Thats when I saw how dramatically my profession had changed during the years I had been away. Read what it was like for me to return to work here.
However, after only about 6 months, COVID vaccine mandates for health care workers in California came in full force and left me with a difficult decision. After suffering medical trauma for several years, and because I recently recovered easily from COVID, I didn’t feel comfortable taking the new MRNA vaccine. So with much grief, I chose to leave my job after all of that time I was disabled and displaced. This loss is what activated me because I realized I was in a unique position to speak the truth without fear of cancellation. I’m a person with such a rich professional mental health background who isn’t afraid of cancel culture. I felt a “calling”.
I have since done more reading of scholars like Thomas Sowell and I watched the documentary Uncle Tom. My new education informed me more of history and economics. However, for the most part, I haven’t changed. I still care about vulnerable populations. I was just fooled to believe this made me a liberal. Now I see things differently. I understand how the government played a role in destroying the black nuclear family with the welfare state. I recognize how, despite high spending in on education, most children in black neighborhoods perform far below grade level. I watched as the lockdowns hurt the very people the liberals claim to care about the most: the poor minority populations. I had to swallow a large piece of humble pie when I recognized that government “solutions” are the problem.
“Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions. “-Thomas Sowell
I know I’m a unicorn: A social worker without the leftist views. I realized it was important for people to know that I and others like me exist. Politics didn’t used to be so divisive, and it would be nice if we could just stop talking about it. But perhaps, not talking is how we ended up here, in such a divided country with extreme mistrust of all of our major institutions.
If you are looking for a therapist with conservative values, don’t give up. You can start by looking here.
Pamela Garfield-Jaeger is a licensed clinical social worker in California. She completed her MSW in 1999 from New York University. She has a variety of experience in schools, group homes, hospitals and community-based organizations. Since getting fired for not getting the C*VID vaccine, she has dedicated herself to educate parents and embolden other mental health professionals to challenge the ideological capture of her profession.
Pamela is currently writing a new book entitled “A Practical Approach to Gender Distress: Tips and Tools for Families” COMING SOON!
For more detailed information on how to empower yourself as a parent and navigate the mental health field, see the Parents' Guide to Mental Health.
I have to say it.... The silence is deafening. Your story is much the same as Abram of the Old Testament, being called to leave family & heritage behind in order to initiate a new nation and become your ethnic father some 4,000 years ago. Repeated again with Apostle Paul (with variations) some 2,000 years later. Sure sounds like He has a plan for you... Question is, Do you have any plans for Him?
Your story is inspiration, Pam. I hope when people read it they will feel encouraged. You’re not alone. So many of us have had similar experiences but are afraid to admit it and share. Only because we become the brunt of people’s negative judgements, including “friends”. So thank you for posting. You are courageous. Thank you for standing up for what is right.