ACA Blog

Day 6- At The Vine & Branch (for returning soldiers and their families) 0600 Fishing trip with Dave “Jim, Mark, Terry, Anthony, this is Kate, and she’s one of our Best Practice Volunteers. Kate is a Road Construction Forman out of Portland with Benson Group. And….she says that she can ‘out fish’ all of you.” “Whatever Dave! Nice to meet you all.”

The next few blogs are in response to email requests I have received asking me to expand on the discussion about managed care. A free brochure on the topic can be downloaded and printed at a link that will be supplied in part two. Feel free to share it.

What would you do if you didn’t get along with your clinical supervisor? I was faced with this issue during my Master’s program; and in hindsight, I would have handled things differently.

I must admit to a fascination with greeting cards. I think it started when I was about four years old. I have an early memory of being with my mother in a small drug store in my neighborhood that sold the sundry soaps, Band-Aids, batteries and medicines. This drug store also had an aisle of beautifully decorated cards for many different occasions. Since I was only about 40 inches tall or so I was eye height to the “birthstone” birthday cards. These were cards with a fake gem attached by glue that represented the “jewel” for your birth month. So, if you had a birthday in April your “birthstone” was a Diamond, May an Emerald, March an Aquamarine. I often would stare at the cards and covet them – until one day I stealthy poked at a card that had a Peridot, a lovely green, glued to it. I dislodged it at the very moment the store manager saw me, and I got in trouble. I think what I mostly felt was shame at being caught – and of course my mom was mad at me as well. You would think that forever more I would shy away from greeting cards – avoiding the resurgence of a bad memory.

At the beginning of a web seminar on counseling couples, a nationally known presenter said that only after she discarded everything she had learned in graduate school about counseling couples was she able to be effective in counseling couples.

“If you love the work you do then you never have to work a day in your life…” This phrase sounds like a multi generational war cry from parents to their children. Almost like a shrouded warning to pick a career that you enjoy and stick with it. Sadly, for most the reality is not quite so simple. The majority of us will have several careers and positions during our lives and too often, loving what you do becomes secondary to getting paid.

Last spring my husband came home from work with the news that he had been laid off again. This was the third time in the past few years that he’d been laid off. The difference this time was in the finality of the decision as there would be no call back to work. The past five months have been spent trying to adjust to the new normal of life in the ranks of the unemployed. We are certainly not alone. We are the 99%. The unemployment rate for Oregon in August was 9.6% with 21 of the state’s 36 counties in double digits with a high of 15.6%. Of the 14 million estimated to be out of work nationally, 75% have been unemployed for more than six months and 50% have been out of work for over two years. The academic reality of what it is like to be unemployed is evidenced in a recent Rutgers two year study where 32% of participants stated there were under “a good deal of stress” and 47% were under “some stress”. 11% of those in the Rutgers study had sought professional help for clinical depression. Those people were more fortunate than most as the majority of the unemployed can’t seek professional counseling due to loss of employer paid insurance coverage.

A client walks into a practice. More specifically, he walks into a session with you. After a brief initial interview, he says to you, “I have problem X.” Now is the moment of truth. That $100,000 education and all those years of clinical experience are called upon for effective goal setting. Your client looks up at you with those dewy, expectant eyes. You give it to him straight. “Do the opposite of X.”

One of the things people often report when they move to North Dakota is the hardiness of the people. Sometimes I take that community characteristic for granted. But, I was reminded of it recently at Fargo Fest, a community celebration centered aptly centered on the movie Fargo. As we gathered together and gazed up at the outside viewing of the cult classic, I found myself smiling. Not only due to the kettle corn coma, but because I was connected with community.

Please forgive me, the title is deliberately misleading. I wanted to get your attention and hold it for the five minutes it takes you to read my blog and the ten minutes that (I hope) you spend considering the idea I present. The title, ‘Turn me off…” would have been more apt, but would that have encouraged you to read this?