Susan Jennifer Polese

In the latest issue of Counseling Today there is a great article exploring counselors in transition by Lynne Shallcross, a senior writer at the publication. This cover article is a tour de force focusing on interviews with various counselors in certain phases and experiencing different transitions in their careers. As I read and thoroughly enjoyed the piece I pondered my own impending transition: that one being from the classroom to an internship in the fall - which will be the start of my final year of graduate school. Hmm, it gives me the willies just thinking about it.

It may be one of the most over-used words of 2011. It has been a staple in Oprah’s particular brand of psychobabble. It is “acceptance.” And it’s a loaded word. In the past for me it brought up some new-age connotations and some walls as well. In some respects, at first glance, acceptance can be seen as a form of giving up. A kind of “this is the way it is” hiding under a thin veil of “and we can’t change it.” But that’s a first glance and though you may fall in love at first sight understanding a powerful concept like acceptance requires more time and an open mind.

I was six years old running with a wild pack comprised of my thirteen cousins, equal parts boys and girls, at our Grandmother's farm in upstate New York. As our mother's drank coffee and chatted and our dad's played poker and tried to solve the world's problems me and my kin were not only allowed, but required to play outside and amuse ourselves. We were not supervised, which by today's standards seems unthinkable. I am not one to romanticize the past – my male cousins were unruly boys and I found them twenty-five percent fascinating and seventy percent frightening. I was a partially undecided.

The year before last my husband and I began a gutsy tradition – gutsy if you were brought up in the Roman Catholic faith that is, as we both were – we decided to forgo celebrating Easter. Yes, out of the clear, blue sky we pulled a three-sixty and began welcoming that celebrated spring holiday just as any other day.

Whatever our theoretical leanings as counselors acting as our authentic-selves and being in the present with our clients is essential. This is taught in school, experienced in internship, and is reinforced in supervision. It is expected in agency work as well as private practice. This state of being for helping professionals is ethical and appropriate. No matter where we are in our training or careers, counselors aspire to this – be there with the client.