Emotional Baggage

We all have it. We all deal with it. We all have the extra 459lbs hanging around our neck weighing and slowing us down. I don't think I have yet to meet one person who doesn't carry some form of it around even if on the surface they look/act normal. Almost nobody gets through childhood/early adulthood without a few scratches left behind.

After awhile this baggage starts to get really painful, worn out, and really heavy and it is at this point people will usually try to do something about it. Sometimes this will be seeking the help of a trained therapist and sometimes it causes people to turn toward drugs and other forms of addictions to self medicate their hurt. The real problems start to happen when we refuse to acknowledge or deal with that baggage and it starts to interfere with our current lives.

I believe that everyone makes and has choices when it comes to their lives. Even though at times we may not feel like we have a choice by not choosing to exercise our choice we are in essence choosing. So with those choices I believe we can choose to make changes when it comes to our baggage.

Once we decide we no longer want to carry it we can make the choice to drop it...whew what a relief! I am not saying that you can snap your fingers and poof your baggage will disappear, that will take time and HARD work on your part. But something happens once you even acknowledge you want to change, things CHANGE. The change in your attitude creates change and that change gives you the will to keep it going. Problem is....people don't do change well........see below.


Even with the resistance to change people do it all the time. So if you decide that your baggage is to heavy to keep carrying....it's time to make a change and trade out the old heavy bag for a much more cushioned one :). I recommend finding a local qualified therapist of course to help you with your journey :)


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School work this week 4/9-4/15

Random picture of Greyson at the beach a few weeks ago :)

So for this week here is what I am looking at as far as homework. I keep forgetting to include what I have to read for the upcoming weeks assignments so hopefully I will remember from this point forward.

Ethics:
Read Chapter 14
School counseling confidentiality discussion post
School counseling drugs discussion post
4 discussion response
Work on final ethics paper due 5/4

Lifespan:
Read Chapter 12
Chapter 12 discussion due
2 discussion responses due
Work on Case study outline due 4/20

Theories:
Read Chapter 13
Chapter 13 discussion due
2 discussion responses due
Begin thinking about personal model of counseling paper due 5/8

So there you have it folks!! I am coming up on my final weeks of my courses and so my big papers are starting to be on my to do list. At this point I have roughly 4 weeks left of these courses, then I get about a week break and then I start summer courses which I am excited about!!!

Happy Easter Everyone

Happy Easter everyone!!! I hope everyone has a fabulous day today and enjoys whatever activities you are taking part in. We are playing it low key around the Turner household because the hubs and I both have a nasty cold. We did however do the Easter basket and egg hunt thing already this morning with Greyson. Greyson really loved hunting the eggs so we had to hide the same eggs 3 times in the yard ;).

Greyson's Easter Basket:
Later this evening I plan to make a ham steak, homemade creamed corn, mashed potatoes and mac n cheese with some rolls and pass the sickness back and forth :) And since I just can't help it......
Have a great day!!

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A little something....

Doesn't this say it all?

Source here

Community And More About Me

Since some of you may not know much about me I will tell you a little more in this post :)

I met my husband in 2001 and since then we have been traveling around the USA for his work....this month makes 11 years that we have been traveling and our move to Washington (state) made what I believe was our 15th move and Washington is our 9th state lived in I believe. I stopped counting a while back. In 2007 Greyson was born and in July he will turn 5 and be ready to head into kindergarten next year if we chose to go that route and all of this along with my upcoming (hopefully!) career as a counselor has me questioning our life choices.



Obviously I am a people person and I enjoy being around people all the time and I need to be around people, my husband is exactly the opposite. As long as he has Greyson and I he is content. If only I could be that way. In some ways even though he manages about 25 guys he doesn't really interact with them as much as you would think and spends much of his working time alone. I would go insane. I need to interact and talk with people daily and preferably multiple times daily. Which leads me to the other part of the title of this post community.

Community is something that has become really important to me and I realize just how much I have missed out the last 11 years moving all the time. I see friends on Facebook for example that have a wealth of people around them locally and I admit I am a bit envious. I don't have this. Yes I have friends but every single one of them live in a different state and the majority of them live in different states from one another. Distance really is not good for friendships because the old saying out of sight out of mind really is true in my case.

So I find myself being drawn to settling down and being closer to family. I have 4 siblings and tons of aunts, uncles and cousins that all live in Kentucky. While I can't imagine ever living in my hometown again I would love to be closer to them and see them more and allow Greyson the chance to get to know them. So the time has come to make that decision and I find myself being torn between my husband's dream and mine which are completely opposite.

If I had my way (and money where no object of course...which is it...as always) I would be living in that cabin you see below...this picture which I found on Google is of a cabin in the Smokey Mountains (TN).

And so the choice of what to do has presented itself and I have no answers and it is frustrating....very frustrating. Having to choose where to live when you really have nothing to tie you to one location is difficult as the possibilities seem endless. Even if I narrow my choices to within 4-5 hours of my family there are still to many choices and I find that I am feeling overwhelmed with making the choice. Move to a place more permanent? Or stay with the current course of continuing to move around for my husbands job? What would you do?

A Effective Counselor

So what makes a good effective therapist? I came across this illustration at some point and I think it is pretty correct don't you?

Lets look at a few of these shall we....

Knows his/her limitations: well what does this mean exactly? It means that as a counselor you know that you do not know everything and you cannot help everyone.

Seeks to understand the problem: What this means is that as counselors we make a really BIG effort to understand the problem/the why someone is hurting, the why someone needs our help etc. Without understanding the issues our clients are having how can we be effective helpers?

Is approachable: This means that our clients don't look at us and run the other direction in simple form....but seriously this means that we conduct ourselves in such a manner that our clients feel like they can connect and approach us with any issue.

So what do people look for when they look for a counselor? Is there something missing from that list?

Reality Therapy

This past week in my theories course we studied reality therapy. Each week in my theories course we answer questions about the current theoretical orientation that we are studying questions such as: what would be the goal with yourself as the client in (insert therapy orientation here). We basically apply the principles of the various types of therapies that we are learning about to our own life/self in an effort to show that we understand how to apply them to various issues. I can see the benefit to this but I also wish we had to apply and come up ways to work with clients with a variety of presenting issues using the current therapy techniques we're learning about possibly using case studies to do this and come up with how we would approach working with that client.

Even with this though I find myself being drawn to reality therapy and I agree with the basic principles behind it. You might be thinking that reality therapy is basically just bringing people back to reality, and in some ways it is but in other ways along with most other modalities of therapy using these techniques is an art form. Reality therapy tries to figure out exactly what it is that you want from your life, exactly what your doing to try to get there and exactly what you could change and do instead of get the real results that you wish to have. It looks something like this:

Reality therapist are concerned with helping you to understand how the current choices and behaviors you have made or are making are creating the current issues within your life. One of the goals of this type of therapy (and all others really) is to help you take responsibility for your own actions and to learn that the only person you can control is yourself. Reality therapy also helps you define your needs and I found this illustration online to show you what is considered basic needs for everyone:
Once you accept responsibility for your part in your life you can begin to work towards making changes in your life to move you toward the life you really want to have. You have to focus on the present in order to get there and this type of therapy really doesn't advocate hanging on to your past which most of us tend to want to do. Our past only defines our future if we allow it. And with that I leave you to ponder.

What do you want from life and what are you doing to get it?


Source 1, 2,3