ACA Blog

She waited nervously for me to arrive. Her daughter had told her that she needed to see me and that she didn’t really have a choice. She was standing at the front door waiting. Her sweater was pulled tightly around her for protection against the still cold February breeze. As I pulled into her driveway, childhood memories of my grandparents and then my parents flashed into my mind. They too stood by the front porch waiting. Waiting as we arrived to visit, or even worse, waiting as we left them alone yet again returning to the busyness of our lives. They would stand there waving as we drove from sight.

It’s not easy being a celebrity. I mean, sometimes I just want to be able to have a cheeseburger without a psychology groupie asking for my autograph, swinging a copy of one of the books I have coauthored/ contributed to or holding one of my many pamphlets while their friends take picture after picture. Don’t even get me started about the paparazzi; like I am the only person who forgot to wear their undies in public. Now I wear them outside my slacks just to make sure. And heaven forbid if I go without shaving for a few days, the gossip columns will start rumors about my starting a “hippie psychedelic cult of the Doc” or something…

I have a personal relationship with depression. The depressive periods in my life are highly situational in so much as in the past they occurred after my divorce and most recently since the death of my mother. However, I am no stranger to the effects that chronic depression can have on a person and the people in their lives. I am certain that along with having difficulties with anxiety, my mother suffered from depression – never really addressed clinically or in any other way. The man I married when I was in my twenties was most certainly depressed – like so many others I recreated in my adult life what was familiar to me as a child. He, also, do this day has never addressed his depression – or chronic basic unhappiness. I have been affected by depression and so I am interested in what this condition is and ways to combat it - and in another sense, ways to accept it and actively deal with it.

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.

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 are observing. Mindell (2000) in his book Quantum Mind provides a beautiful illustration of how concepts in quantum physics (e.g., nonlocality, entanglement, etc.) are similar to the ones in psychology (unconsciousness, consciousness, dreams, synchronicity, etc.) and how they both complement each other. He depicted an image of spanning tree with both above and below the ground. He illustrated that above the ground is the consensus or observable reality, but below is non-consensus reality that is as weird as quantum mechanics. He provided the example of a fairy tale Alice in Wonderland to illustrate how reality exists in the rabbit’s hole (below the ground). The question is how far down the rabbit’s hole we want to go?

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 head” during that first session.

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 steady yearning to find a more comfortable niche. My comfort zone is cradling me as I urge to break free.

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 perspective and four years of school. So how did the planning work?

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 medication. And Oscar? Clearly Mr. Madison has executive functioning challenges and really could use some help from a professional organizer. On a more psychoanalytical note: I don’t even want to consider how either of these two were toilet trained!

[caption id="attachment_4859" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Jennifer Bingaman"][/caption] 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 would be resoundingly clear to me. Having never been in the field before, it did not occur to me that self-disclosure and its possible effects on a client were more than two options. In a matter of three weeks in my internship, I’ve begun navigating through shades of grey.