I have the privilege of having just returned from a four month Fulbright Scholar experience in Ireland. I continue to reflect upon and try to integrate the wonderful experiences, challenges and learning that took place for me as I taught at a college there and interacted with the helping professions in many settings and fields [...]

I am happy to say I have just had the privilege of completing a time in Ireland as a Fulbright Scholar. (This is somewhat to explain my absence as a frequent blogger but really it is no excuse!) I will try to share some insights as I integrate them, as my experience here gave me [...]

The recent tragic and sad event in Tucson continues to be in our awareness daily, and as I watch the news I note the growing makeshift memorials both at the scene of the crime and at the hospital. This phenomenon of a spontaneous development of a gathering of mementos, candles, poems, prayers, artwork, trinkets, etc. [...]

Many industries are focusing these days on cross training, preparing workers for different parts of the job to increase coverage and back-up as well as strengthen the overall workforce. In sports, to cross train develops strength and stamina. How about in counseling? We are not in a race nor do we work in teams usually [...]

I’ve been a helping professional for enough years that many terms have come and gone in referring to our work, diagnoses, and clients. Recently a nomenclature shift happened in our state Medicaid paperwork that now refers to “consumers”. I have already been through patients, clients, participants, attendees, and now consumers comes around. Even professionals are [...]

We’ve all seen the children’s book “Are you my Mother?” (P.D. Eastman, 1960) and it is a perennial favorite among children. But I am using this and inspired by recent films to open a discussion of the issue of children wanting to know who their parents are. Two recent movies have me thinking about it- [...]

There are many sociological and interpersonally weighty issues raised by the whole arena of “social networking” sites such as Facebook. But recently I began to think about how inspiring some of the silly, playful parts of Facebook can be for ways to reach our clients creatively. For those of you that partake of Facebook you [...]

If you are like me, when I think of ethics I think of confidentiality, multiple relationships, competence, boundaries, impaired practioners, etc. I rarely, until recently that is, thought of the word “billing”. These days I do think of billing as an ethical issue, because I asked my state licensure board what types of complaints they [...]