This blog post is an encouragement for those students in non-traditional programs everywhere. This blog will hopefully help you gain the confidence of leaving anonymity behind and recognizing that regardless of your school format, what you have to say is relevant and important –be it via email- to continuing building a great counselor community.

When I was very young I would wake up in the middle of the night from a particular dream that I could not escape. It would begin innocently enough with the arrival of a soft drumbeat. The drumming would grow louder and louder until I found myself in a forest standing at a distance behind [...]

Quantum mechanics has changed the picture of the reality. According to quantum mechanics, the reality does not already exist out there but it is created in here. Humans are a part of nature and integrated in the observed reality. We cannot stand outside of the reality and pretend to observe it without influencing what we [...]

As I begin personal therapy at my graduate school student counseling center I realize that I am analyzing everything the therapist is saying. What is her theoretical orientation? Was that an open or closed question? Will we be goal setting? How much money does she make? Yes, I was more than a little “in my [...]

I admit it, I’m green. I’d like to think I possess good intuition and that a firm foundation for my counseling future is being laid in graduate school. But I feel very confused about which populations I want to ultimately work with. I alternate between an unrealistic wanting to work with virtually everyone and a [...]

A huge part of the practicum experience was supervision and planning. I spent at least two hours a week discussing cases and planning what to do next. As laborious as this felt at times I am grateful that my supervisors allowed me to use their experience as a guide, enhanced by my ideas, a systems [...]

I recently watched the original film version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” and it was as funny and touching as when I first saw it. Viewing the classic flick as a counselor-in-training I have rediscovered Felix as a person with obsessive compulsive disorder who would benefit from a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and [...]

The rule I’ve learned in school about self-disclosure is that we must only share our stories if they are therapeutically effective for our clients. In my naïveté, I took this law at face value. I accepted therapeutically effective as a binary option, either a self-disclosure for therapeutic effect or not at all – something that [...]