ACA Blog

One of the largest mistakes would-be interns make in attempting to find internships is very, very easy to avoid. Here’s how.

Ever wonder what the profile of the person ‘least likely’ to seek out counseling is? Look at your client list. You will find that it is noticeably lacking in this population: the older, white male. Now get this: 73% of suicides are committed by, yeah, “older, white males.” Do they need us? You bet. Will they come to us? Probably not, even though their suicide rate is higher than older, black males and women put together.

One of the most daunting challenges I find as a mental health counselor working in a domestic violence and sexual assault agency is having patience – patience with clients who are resistant to change. And, boy, so many are.

I was approached recently by a very shy, humble woman who was just starting out on her career as a counselor. Though her words were quiet and her eye contact all but nonexistent, I sensed a real kindred spirit, kind heart and friendly soul. As we talked she told me that she had read some of the text books that I contributed to and followed my blogs. It is always humbling to know that there are even a few folks who take the time to read even one item that I have crafted.

In the 80’s, there was much ado about the baby boomers latest trend: cocooning. It was heralded that theirs would soon be a generation of stay-at homes, who wore sweat clothes and flip-flops instead of tuxedos and stilettos. No longer would they be out on the town, but instead at home watching movies on their VCR’s. And that is exactly what happened, but not just because the VCR had been invented, but frankly, because they were getting tired.

According to William Hewitt, “the subconscious mind is like an obedient servant—it just does what it is told to do. The subconscious mind doesn’t think, reason, or rationalize. It only adheres to instructions. Conversely, you conscious mind does think, reason, and rationalize—and often argues against what you want. This is why the conscious mind needs to be relaxed and quieted so it won’t counter what you are instructing your subconscious mind to do.”

“Let’s get over it and move on” is a comment left on an article in memoriam to those who lost their lives at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in today’s newspaper. If only it was that simple, if only there could be a magic wand that would miraculously take away the pain and traumatic grief for those spending Mother’s Day without their children today.

You don’t have to read War And Peace to know that Tolstoy sure had a handle on people. “Everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself,” he said. In fact, I’ll bet he’d have made one heck of a counselor. He certainly had the patience. Scholars say that he endured a 48 year marriage known as, ‘one of the unhappiest in literary history.’ Interestingly, he would die of pneumonia at a train station the very night he was finally making his escape, both from the marriage and his aristocratic lifestyle.

Elle had worked for 15 years in various capacities of human resources. Most recently she had been a recruiter for a medium-sized staffing firm. She loved this work, found it very satisfying to understand each candidate’s profile and then try to match them in a job that would be a good fit. She felt very fortunate to have found this role as she’d taken a break relatively early in her career to have three children.

So I’ve been thinking about this idea of the Angry Black woman. Specifically, I’ve been relating this concept to the workplace. I recently attended a diversity training where the presenter was arming us with tools on how to work with a client that has persistent anger related to her job, boss or co-workers. We were empowered with breathing exercises, visualization exercises and friendly confrontational techniques to help our female client deal with the irrational ideas that she was holding that was creating anger. What I never heard was how to work with a client who has the right to be angry.