The patient sitting in front of me is sobbing as she describes her battle with depression and her suicide attempt tonight. I fight the urge to start counseling her, and continue to ask questions. This is one of the hardest parts of the work I do, to not feel compelled to go into the helper [...]
“So you’re a shrink huh?” “You just talk all day and get paid for it? Man, what a racket.” “As a (hairdresser, bartender, cab driver, street vendor or street walker) we really do the same job because people tell me their problems all day long.”
Death is on the brain lately. Sounds cheerful, right? Makes you really want to keep reading, doesn’t it? It should. It happens to all of us. I was really lucky. My first experience with death, the one where I really got it, happened when I was 23. I had that many good years before putting [...]
There’s a misconception that creative interventions focus solely on artistic ideas, such as art or music. But if you practice under that assumption, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to be creative with your clients. Creativity is really about finding different perspectives of expression. Not everyone expresses themselves in the same way. And [...]
One of my classes this semester is Cultural Foundations of Counseling. Our first assignment was to write our cultural autobiography. My initial reaction to the assignment was confusion because of my limited definition of culture. In my mind, culture reflected race, and I personally did not see much culture in the white race. As my [...]
The issue isn’t new, yet the subject of bullying has been brought into awareness recently as a major concern among children and adolescents. No longer is bullying expressed through means such as physical fighting, gossip, intimidation, social exclusion, note passing, and threatening looks, but through various channels like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, E-mail, text messages, instant [...]
My one client we will call Lily has been coming to me for 6 weeks. She presented with severe panic and anxiety issues related to her ex-husband trying to get custody of her children, however he is a drug addict. He stole the children’s Christmas presents to pay for drugs, drained Lily’s savings account and [...]
Day 2 of Privilege, Identity, and Cross-Cultural Diversity – 10th Annual Southeastern Conference on Cross-Cultural Issues in Counseling and Education. The conference continued to offer a plethora of interesting sessions to attend as it rolled into its second day. I chose to attend “Addressing Cross-Cultural Barriers in Educational Settings” a thought-provoking session led by Dr. [...]
The views expressed here are solely those of the blog authors; they are not necessarily the views of the American Counseling Association.