Fellow blog readers.
This month’s blog features an interview with Natalie Rogers, Carl Rogers’s daughter.Dr. on Counselling and creativity.
http://www.nrogers.com/Interview.pdf
Empowering females sounds as though we are dismissing or ignoring males, but the truth is, both genders desperately need to be equally empowered. Therefore, while the intent of this article is to address female concerns and issues, the heart of the article should be applied to all of the human race.
STEREOTYPES AND MISPERCEPTIONS
For far too long, the female gender has been plagued with stereotypes, typecasting, as well as, subtle and blatant discrimination. There has been a long history of discrimination reigning down from religious orders, politics halls, and employment opportunities. While blatant discrimination has become against the law in many countries; it is the subtle form of discrimination that we often overlook. The discrimination in the female gender begins at a very young age. “You shouldn’t buy Jill a Hot Wheel, rather buy her a Barbie Doll or a Littlest Pet Shop.” “Now Amy, let your brother carry in the groceries, for he’s a boy.” “Amanda, let’s go shopping while the boys work on the vehicles.” “Tommy, you should let your sister wash the dishes, while you mow the lawn.” Now of course, not all of the above statements apply to all children, however, there remains a general outlook on specific roles that boys and girls should partake.�
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Summer is here! It is deliciously warm. It is the season where we take off our layers – both physically and metaphorically. We want to feel light and unburdened.
It is a great time to deal with any lingering resentment. It burdens both our physical and emotional aspects of our body. It taints our thinking toward the negative. It makes us look over our back as it influences our outlook of life.
That being said, it is not easy for many of us to give up our resentment and pain. For some, the feeling of indignation is very empowering. By holding the resentment over someone’s head, it gives them the power in the relationship, albeit negative. For others, it gives them a purpose and/or a focus for their thoughts. Still for others, it gives them the excuse to not take full responsibility over their life by blaming another. These are just a few types of justifications for not forgiving another human being.
Personally, when I feel resentment toward another, my body feels physically heavy as if it is dragging. It sucks the energy and joy out of my life. My thoughts become obsessively directed toward the person and/or situation. It is as if the past experience takes on a life of its own.
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Career Buzz radio recently explored the value of career conversations. Professor Frans Meijers is a top researcher in the area of career guidance in the Netherlands. He shared with listeners all that’s wrong about career conversations with youth in school, and how to right it. But why doesn’t the education system work to help youth with this important task? “It doesn’t work because you only can build your [career] identity, you can only develop your heart on the basis of real life experience and schools don’t offer real life experiences.” This episode is really worth a listen.
CareerCycles Tip: Want to help your teenager or young adult develop their career? Professor Frans Meijers says: help them engage in experiences then talk to them about it. Find out how to implement Prof Meijers’ simple formula: Listen to the whole interview Listen to our inspiring past shows
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According to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association Canadians send 227 million text messages per day. That’s 82,855,000,000/year.
Wow.
That is a whole lot of texting power that we mental health professionals might be able to tap into [no pun intended].
As you might expect the vast majority of these text messages are being sent by teens and young adults. The frequency of text messaging has increased year over year. In 2010 the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project reported that, amongst teens, the frequency of use of texting had overtaken the frequency of every other common form of interaction with their friends, including face-to-face interactions. [1]
And the ways in which texting is used have evolved as well. As a literature review of teenagers and texting points out, “multiple studies in various countries have been conducted on the content of young adults’ text messages, with similar results across studies. Many text messages have to do with coordination of events and maintaining relationships”. This is an area where texting might be useful for mental health initiatives.
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If you follow the digital world at all (and that’s all of you) you will have seen the recent surge of the latest data on how the Internet, cellphones, social media, clothing style shifts, music video’s and tween/teen movies have impacted the hypersexualization of our children today.
Sitting in the audience with about 200 other counsellors, psychologists, social workers and concerned adults, I recently viewed the acclaimed work of the talented Maureen Palmer of CBC, documenting the effect of this shift in culture, on youth today. Here are a few stats:
The old thinking was that if your family had a pet, the children were more likely to become allergic to the pet. And if you came from an allergy-prone family, pets should be avoided.”
~ James E. Gern, M. D.
As humans, we are often known to show superior attitudes to our fellow dwellers of this planet. In fact, we not only have an ability to cognitively outwit the animal kingdom and we have a means with which we can measure our intellectual superiority through IQ (Intelligence Quotient) testing. Ironically, despite our intellectual superiority over the animal kingdom, we have yet to manufacture a substitute for our four legged friends. Moreover, the health benefits received from relationships with our four legged and feathered friends seems to be irreplaceable.
What is it about the relationship with our pets that we cannot live without? Why is it that children are instantly drawn to a new puppy or kitten? What causes the heart of a hardened criminal to melt like butter when playing with a puppy?
A Zen practitioner asks his Zen Master: why do I have to meditate? What is the purpose of meditation? How can sitting meditations, quietly without any movement, thinking of nothing, only breathing in and out, lead me out of suffering and becoming wise? It does not make sense to me.
The Zen Master responds to the peaceful practitioner: Go sit, then you will find out.
So the practitioner starts to sit with all kinds of questions in mind. Although initially the student does not understand meditation, he trusts his teacher who has trained for over 40 years, and who is compassionate toward everyone. The student believes that his teacher will do no harm to him, and is giving the advice for the best interest of the practitioner.
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Jeff and I continue to highlight approaches to understanding identity formation and how this formation impacts vocational decision-making. In this blog we focus on Erikson’s psychosocial approach. Erikson proposed eight psychosocial stages that outline significant developmental activities that individuals accomplish at certain times during their lifespan. The first stage that deals with identity takes place during the adolescent period and is referred to as the identity versus role confusion stage. Erikson described identity as a personal sense of “self-sameness” that continues over time. In this blog we want to focus on some of the cognitive dynamics that take place during this stage and how these dynamics may impact vocational decision-making.
A recent discussion thread on a LinkedIn group covered the issue of whether or not training in online counselling is necessary. Some feel no training is needed. “After all”, they say, “I’m a competent counsellor and I know how to use email and Skype. How hard can it be? What would I need to train for?”
Working within one’s scope of practice is an important ethical consideration. What does that mean in this context?
Online counselling is a developing field. Digital communication technologies are continuously evolving. There are technological and therapeutic aspects to online work no matter what your theoretical orientation or specialization.
I believe we need training in clinical, ethical and legal issues. We need to learn the relationship skills we need to counsel online. We need to develop a high level of comfort with the technology. We need to be clear on confidentiality and privacy issues and how to address them. And we need to understand the legalities. Understanding legal issues is huge. The situation with respect to laws, jurisdiction, certification and insurance is also continuously evolving. (see CCPA’s webpage section on E-counselling http://www.ccpa-accp.ca/en/ecounselling/)