ACA Blog

Children everywhere are rejoicing! School is officially out and summer is finally here! Many of these kids are busy packing their trunks and will soon be on the road to summer camp. I have so many fond childhood memories of the camp that I attended for two glorious weeks each summer that I just assumed every kid loved going to camp. Not the case. I have talked to several kids over the past few weeks that are dreading the experience.

With a whole new crop of American students heading off on international study experiences this August and September, it’s the role of the counselors working with them (not just at universities but also in agencies or private practice) to help them feel prepared for this experience. This came to my attention when I recently gave a presentation to American undergraduates about adjusting to life in China. They had just arrived here and while some had been to China before and spoke a bit of Chinese, I realized there was quite a bit that they weren’t aware of regarding how to have a positive study abroad experience.

I just returned home from the Florida Counseling Association’s (FCA) annual leadership development institute (LDI , and boy can I feel the energy! It is just such a wonderful experience being in a room full of leaders from various counseling backgrounds and stages of their career. Doctoral students were eager to be involved and receive mentorship as emerging leaders.

I have just scrapped the blog that I was going to post tonight. It seems superfluous compared to the picture of the face that I am looking at right now: a handsome, suntanned father of two girls that I know well; a devoted husband of a good friend of mine. He is 55. His blue eyes just sparkle under that big smile of his. I am reading his obituary.

Recently I was reminded of the transformative power of metaphor, and the excitement and comfort that we derive from having both words and visual images to describe our present circumstances. Sometimes life’s challenges take on an abstract and confusing form, and making sense of a presenting problem can be a challenging puzzle.

Leadership is something that is often expected of clinical professionals whether or not they are supervisors, directors, owners of private practice or newbies who have just entered the field. Newbies become de facto leaders of their clinical groups, or even viewed as leaders of sorts by their individual clients. Others, as they grow in responsibilities find that they are put in charge of leading whether they want to be or not.

I had an interesting chat with a psychiatrist last week. He said that working with diseases of the mind was infinitely more difficult than dealing with those of the body. Why? Because with diseases of the body, say diabetes or high cholesterol, people take action. Their doctors say, ‘You must take insulin or your liver will shut down,’ or ‘It is imperative you take statins to bring your cholesterol levels down or you could have a heart attack.’ But when he makes a diagnosis of say, ‘ADHD,’ and suggests medication, often the patient, ‘feels they are just fine,’ so sees no need to follow his recommendations.

A friend recently remarked that after briefly browsing CNN’s website she felt as if the world was coming to an end. Perceptions of apocalypse prevail when at every corner a natural disaster, shooting, rape, gang violence, or drug cartel event explodes from the screen complete with special effects and action packed cinematography!

It has been a long time since I have contributed to the ACA Blog. Corrections Behavioral Health is busy during the spring and early summer months.

Many people fail to reach their potential because they look only at their behavior and their conditions or results. They only scratch the surface. But, again, picture life as a tree. The roots and seeds are your thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, and conclusions as well as your conditioning. The fruits on that tree represent your behaviors, results, and conditions. People often ignore the seeds and roots, and address only the fruits.