Author: missycooper1

Love

Posted on by missycooper1

Love. Its a verb, a noun, an adjective. Its simple and complex.  Love is this amazing intangible emotion, expression, feeling, belief, experience that even when described and discussed at great lengths can never be truly understood until you have walked in it, flown in it, muddled in it, reveled in it, pained in it, joyed and been overwhelmingly awed in it.

Love is so unique that each person experiences it in their own way, but those who have had the opportunity to open their heart to it share a universality, understanding and common spirit of love’s awesomeness.  I see mothers who love their children and friends who love one another, families whose hearts bolster with love toward each other. Their is also quiet love, unspoken love, secret love, but the most rewarding love is the kind you aren’t afraid to scream from the rooftops about. The kind of love that brings a smile to your lips when you awake or think about the person you love. The kind of love that makes you feel all giddy when you catch a glimpse of the love of your life. There is also that swelling in your heart for the prideful sweet love you feel for your children.

Ahhhh, amore…don’t ya just love love? I’m wishing you all much love today!

How Past Experiences Influence Future Choices

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Past experiences play a huge role in the lives of people and the choices they make. Depending on the theoretical framework you pull from, past experiences may play a significant role in the treatment plan or may not be a focal point at all. For example, in Solution focused therapy attention is focused on what is going right, small goals, and what they can do now to change the problem they came into therapy for. Therefore, little treatment focus is placed on past experiences. Gestalt is all about “promoting awareness through experiences in the here and now…as people become more aware they reconnect with parts of themselves they may have been cut off from (Seligman 2010).” So, basically being aware of how your past has influenced your current position in life, how it has impacted your choices, and being focused on emotions, experiences and sensations to promote growth and change in your life. Existential therapy places focus on choices and finding meaning in life. The past here is used to honor the meanings you have found from life experiences. Adler, Erickson and Freud all felt that the past holds the key to understanding your conscious self. The past influences us; from the teacher who made me feel special in kindergarten to the first boy who broke my heart and especially to the family members that taught me what family and relationships look like (or sometimes shouldn’t look like), the past impacts your choices and your future. The cool part about this thing called life is that we do have a choice in our behaviors and we can work towards a life that gives us meaning and self-actualization. Read More

Change…clear, specific and appealing!

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The concept of change has many aspects and directions to it. The instrumental part? Starting! The key concept in change? Clarity.

Sure, we have had those moments when we have thought about change, maybe we even started planning. Perhaps made an appointment, did some research, and maybe we even kicked in and did a few repetitions on this thing we were changing.

The trouble? Keeping up with it, making it stick. See, change is tough, or isn’t that what we tell ourselves? Well….it feels tough at first. It’s new; its uncomfortable; it’s an awakening, and our mind and body don’t really want to change. They are used to doing what we do; they are used to the same old stuff. This brings about fear, and the realization that either I am going to have to actually utilize effort to make progress, or wow….what if this change doesn’t work? What if I put effort into something and in the end, it doesn’t pan out? See…that is the crux of it.

“What if in the long run, it doesn’t pan out?” This fear paralyzes us from progress, because we would rather stay where we are, where we know what to expect instead of doing something different. Why put work and effort in and then end up disappointed because we cannot change anyways? That is why we not only have to change what we do when we want to acquire a new behavior; we have to think differently. I see this frequently in work with clients with addictions, but the cool thing about changing the way you think, is it is helpful for anyone.

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Expectations for ourselves and our clients

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As a new counselor we have all sorts of expectations. We have expectations for ourselves, how we “should” respond, what techniques and theories we “should” use, how quickly we “should get it” or conceptualize the problem, that we “should” be able to fix it, or help. We also get caught up in the expectations we have for our clients, how they “should” behave and what they “should” get out of each counseling session. I end up making quite a mess of things when I “should” all over the place. This was an ongoing battle for me and every other student in my Internship class.  It was my last semester, the one that brings everything you have learned about counseling into consolidation. The class was much different than I thought it was going to be. I was convinced I would get all kinds of useful information and techniques about how to do counseling right, but the lessons I learned in my final class were less about techniques and more about bringing an awareness to myself.  Sure we talked about ethics, termination, safety, but instead of focusing on figuring out the client, we were instructed to pay attention to what was going on within us. How were we feeling during a session? How were we sitting and breathing, and how did that affect our work with the client? How was our perception of expectations and attachment to our expectations for our clients and ourselves getting in the way of being in the present? Read More

Letters to a Young Therapist

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Letters to a Young Therapist, by Mary Pipher, is a novel that feels like a conversation with a supervisor who cares deeply for the work of helping people and is committed to guiding a novice through the tricky parts of counseling.  I like the style of letters through each chapter.  The overall themes categorized by each letter resonate with some of the work I have already done and gives me some tips and ideas for future work I may encounter.  Read More

On the road to life…

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We experience ups and downs…good times and bad….blah, blah, blah!  On the road to life, you are responsible for your actions, for your decisions, for the people you choose to surround yourself with.  I believe there are many choices we make each day, and the more present we are in each moment, the easier it will be to make the best choices that match up with who we are.  Rogers believed that people have everything within themselves to become happy and move towards a better life.  He thought that the farther a person goes  away from being their true selves, the less happy they are and the more discomfort that is created in their lives. Read More

How to establish goals with a vague client in a collaborative manner.

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Establishing goals with a client can sometimes be one of the most difficult parts of the relationship.  When working at my internship site last year, I worked with folks who were working towards self-sufficiency.  Even if we explained to them that counseling is part of the program during their intake process, they quickly forgot that they “signed up” for it.  When we meet an individual for the first time, they may not understand the purpose of counseling, they may think we are doing something to them.  We would hear statements such as:  “I just need a job” or “I just need a little support until I can get back on my feet.”  The troubling fact is that a large percentage of the individuals we served had been chronically homeless or close to homelessness for a significant portion of their lives.  So, the purpose of counseling for that population is to help them create healthier patterns in many aspects of their lives so they can live in a new and better way. They don’t normally come to see us with open arms, so identifying goals in a collaborative fashion could, at times, be difficult.  Read More

Gestalt and Adlerian theory can help us understand life.

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Gestalt therapy emphasizes the significance of restoring the wholeness of a person’s disembodied parts to create integration and balance.  These “disembodied parts” are the source of a person’s difficulties in life, and bringing awareness to this imbalance supports change.  Perls is quoted by Seligman (2010) describing the human organism, “We have not a liver or heart.  We are liver and heart and brain yet, even this is wrong – we are not a summation of parts but a coordination of the whole.  We do not have a body, we are a body, we are somebody.”  In Gestalt theory and practice, the body is a huge predictor of what is happening in the here and now and how the experience in counseling may translate into their behaviors in their everyday lives.  Gestalt techniques use observable behaviors in the here and now to bring awareness to the client of their emotions and thoughts so that they can reconnect with their body.  Gestalt theorists believe that all the qualities that a client  needs to be successful are within, but they sometimes may need help.  Through awareness and reconnecting with oneself in the here and now growth can occur. Read More

How do you know that you got it right?

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I am close to graduation and completing my internship, I have the privilege to work with some amazing clients that are in recovery.  So far, it has been an eye-opening learning experience.  After class the other night, I started to reflect on a case conceptualization that we discussed in class.  I began to think, how do you know that you got it right?  In some cases there are many different paths a counselor can take with a client and there may be several different relevant issues the client needs help with.  So, again how do you know for sure that you got it right?  Read More

Why is it?

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Why is it that when we have nothing to do we want to do everything, and when we have too much to do we only want a slice of time to do nothing?  Yet when given a chance at either, we still end up feeling disappointed?

As I begin this blog I will ask and attempt to answer the questions such as these that perplex the human condition.  My hope is that my background in counseling will open minds and provoke thought.  For those that are interested in partaking on this journey, welcome! Read More