by
Joseph Peters
| Apr 21, 2022
Voiceover:
Welcome to the Voice of Counseling, presented by the American Counseling Association. This program is hosted by Dr. S Kent Butler. This week's episode is Personal Reflections on Counseling and features Dr. Gerald Corey.
Welcome to the Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. I'm Dr. S Kent Butler, and today joining me is Dr. Gerald Corey. First, before I even go into explaining who this person is, I will tell you this. I met Gerald Corey many, many years ago in passing, and he was one of those individuals that I would see at conferences and just be in awe of, because that's who I read when I was in my master's program, when I was in my Ph.D. Program. I read from his works. So seeing him walking around a conference was mind-boggling. I got to know him by, somebody introduced us or whatever have you, but the thing that was the most amazing was that the very next year, and this man had only seen me in a very quick moment, I don't know if he has a photographic memory or whatever it is, he remembered my name, and I was just a lowly new Ph.D. person, and Gerald Corey, this prolific writer, remembered me. I'll never forget how he made me feel that he would remember who I was, and every time since then.
So Gerry Corey is a professor emeritus of human services and counseling at California State University at Fullerton. He currently holds a position of distinguished visiting professor of counseling at the University of Holy Cross in New Orleans. Gerry has seven books that are published by the American Counseling Association. Today, he's here to speak about one of those books, Personal Reflections on Counseling, which can be purchased through the ACA store.
So with all that, this man who has all this distinguished things behind him, Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Mental Health Counselors Association in 2011, Eminent Career Award from ASGW in 2001, Outstanding Professor of the Year Award from the California State University in 1991, and just this past year in 2021, in April, he received the ACA Thomas Hohenshil National Publication Award. Isn't any wonder.
Gerry, how are you? It's good to see you.
I am so, I don't know if the word is enamored or whatever, with you, because you've always come through anytime I've asked or anytime you have been able to be a part of something for ACA. Not too long ago, we did the thing over the pandemic, reaching out with self-care to counselors. That's your thing, right? You are all about counselors taking care of themselves and making sure that they are well so they can do right by their clients.
Well, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity.
It's good to see you and good to have you here. I was reading something the other day or just in knowing you, you had said something to the effect of you have not missed one ACA conference in quite a few years.
I think about 45. I started at Las Vegas, somewhere, way back when.
Every one, except the last two, which didn't happen.
Didn't happen, right. So you did it virtually, but you didn't. You've been doing a lot of good things, and this particular book that you have now, Personal Reflections, can you talk a little bit about it and what inspired it, and why do people need to go out and get it?
Well, I don't know if they need to go out and get it, but what inspired it was, I was doing a week-long residential class in Nashville, and the person who was there said, "why don't you come, we're having several colleges and universities together, and we want to ask you questions about counseling and your career." I said, "Okay." So they had about 30 questions. Before I finished, I said, "Hey, that might make a good book, questions and answers." So this book is about questions that I've been asked by students primarily over many years, common questions, and it's very personal.
Yeah. Can you give me a sense of what one of those questions might have looked like?
Yeah. Oftentimes people say, "What about when I start, how do I carve out my career?" Or, "How do I get a mentor," or "How do I challenge my self-defeating beliefs that I'm an imposter and I don't belong in this profession?"
You know, "How do I handle it all?"
Right, right, right. Those are really good questions, and I think that, especially starting off, that is something that new professionals or new counselors would like to know. But starting off for you, who were some of your mentors?
There were no big names. Nobody would know them, but one of them was an undergraduate psychology professor. I was just so enthralled with his ability to pull things together. I majored in psych, and then when I was in my doctoral program, Dr. Jane [Waters 00:06:26], she was in the south, and I was so uptight about statistics. I thought I couldn't hack it, and said, "I don't know if I can go through statistics." She looked at me and said, "I think you can," and she gave me a lot of encouragement. Otherwise, I might have said, "I don't think I'm cut out for a doctoral program," but her encouragement kept me in there.
Kept you in, kept you in. I would probably love to have gone back to my master's program and been taught under you. Can you talk a little bit about what it's like to be a student under Gerald or Gerry Corey?
Well, I would hope you'd enjoy the class.
I just finished a couple of classes at the University of Holy Cross, and we have two more coming up, ethics and then theories of counseling.
I don't lecture with PowerPoints. I try to keep it as personal as possible. What I try to do is engage the students, so I ask them, "What are your questions? You read the material. Come in and let's talk about your struggles. What do you most want to know?" I think what I'm doing at Holy Cross is I'm teaching ethics every session. I have 10 sessions. It's a weekend class. I have an outstanding guest speaker coming in.
Careful, I might ask you to come in, but I've got them all booked up. Courtland Lee is coming in to talk about-
Ethics and multicultural counseling and ethics in social justice.
Ted Remley's going to talk about law and ethics.
Barbara Herlihy is talking about her perspective on ethics. My wife and colleague, Marianne Schneider Corey, is going to come in to talk about values and how to manage your values.
Could I be a fly on the wall?
You surely could. We can send you a Zoom link, and you can see all these fabulous speakers. You'll know most of them.
Yeah, I know most of them. Actually, I know all of them.
So the bottom line is I try to make the course exciting and engaging.
As an instructor, sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get students to talk. So once they get past the ah-struckness of being with Gerry Corey, how do you get them to actually ask you questions and be involved in the classroom instruction to talk?
Now, in all honesty, I don't know that I've managed that yet. Sometimes I have, out of 30 maybe, a few that are great participants. They're there. I see them. I don't forget them. But sometimes I say, "I haven't heard some other voices that I'd like to hear. You just saw a video," or "You just heard a guest speaker. Dr. Butler just came in and talked out his journey. What were you left with?" Then silence. So I haven't figured-
That happens with Gerry Corey as well?
Oh yeah. I've figured out, well, maybe I'll have them write out questions, one question per chapter. Then they're asked to write about that. But eventually they warm up and some are, they're not used to that.
Yeah, they're not used to it. How can we change that dynamic, though? What in your mind is in that we need to do as instructors that can help students get out of their own way when they say, "I don't like to talk in large spaces or large crowds of people," or all those types of things. Because it's so important for them to be able to use their voice and find... Because they must have something that happened, right? You ask, "You just heard this person come and talk to you. What's going on for you?" Is it that they feel as though their words don't matter? What do you think are some of the reasons why students are hesitant to speak up?
Well, I think a lot of them are socialized to sit and listen. A lot of them don't believe they have anything worthwhile to say. A lot of them are intimidated. That could be part of it too. But I think we have a lot to do with that. I love co-teaching. Marianne and I presented at conferences. When we co-teach, we are informal and we have a dialogue with each other.
I did a video with Stan, Counseling Stan. Anybody who took theories of counseling probably saw him. He's now one of my valued colleagues. At ACA we present every year for the last 10 or 15 years. He's a PhD in counseling site. He was an undergrad student of mine way back when, and we work, I think, beautifully together. We bounce off of each other. He has different things too, and I think that warms up the audience, co-teaching. I think we need to be personal and engaging and real. If we're stuffy and formal, I think our students are going to pull back.
That's nice to hear. That's good to hear. Where do you get your energy from?
Well, that's a good question. I love what I do. I love teaching. That's why I'm not ready for retirement at 84 years old, okay?
I don't think I'll ever retire. I think part of it is I love what I do. I like engaging with people who are willing to stretch and get out of their comfort zone and who are excited about learning.
The books are a part of that too and working with colleagues and self-care. You mentioned that. That's so important.
I'm not a couch potato. I do a lot of exercise and I think relationships are important.
I try to take good care of myself.
Well, it's apparent. We can look at you and we see you with all this energy. Every time I see you, especially in person, you're just going a hundred miles per hour, it seems, always getting something done. You're a very, very busy person, and I think staying busy also keeps you, maybe that's part of your self-care?
Oh yeah. Meaningful busy.
Not going to meetings, but engaging with colleagues, thinking of new projects.
Yes. You're a phenomenal writer. How did you know? What made you become the Gerald Corey that we see in the textbooks? How did you know that this was your pathway? Because you do some masterful work, and you have really trained a lot of students, not even from them being in your classroom but being in classrooms that utilize your work.
Yeah. Well, when I first started writing, it was I think in 1974, I wrote a book called Teachers Can Make a Difference. It didn't sell very much, but at least it taught me, "Hey, I might be able to write a book." It was with Carl Rogers Freedom to Learn Series. But my first big book was Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy.
I wrote handouts to give my students in class on each theory. One day Brooks/Cole, which is now Cengage, came by and said, "Are you doing any writing?" I said, "Here are all my handouts for every theory," and they didn't have a theory book in those days. So they went back and they eventually said, "We want to offer a contract." That book blows my mind. It's going to be in the 11th edition. I'm working on it now for 11th edition. I've never tried to be too scholarly. I want to be scholarly, yes, but I've tried to be personable. So I imagine my audience, and Marianne is that way too when we write, we imagine our audience and we're talking to them, so we want to be personable and engaging rather than citing the literature after every single sentence.
After every single sentence, yes. And saying it in such the way that you can then turn that into practice, so when you go into practicum and you go into your internship, you are able to remember this from that perspective and be able to be there for your clients when you're in those situations.
That's pretty neat. That's pretty neat. So what would you say to students on their professional journey in terms of how they come to become a counselor? What would be some of the ideas you could offer them as they're going through this?
Oh, this is way too short, this session, because I could easily speak an hour and a half on that. As a matter of fact, Jamie Bludworth, PhD, and who's my Stan in the video and a former student, now we are great friends and colleagues. We're going to present 90 minutes at ACA in Atlanta on becoming a professional counselor.
Wow, we can step right into it. Okay.
[crosstalk 00:16:28] this one, get a mentor.
Jamie would say get a mentor that's a little bit intimidating, and don't say no. Say yes more often than you say no. So if somebody says, "I want you to join me in a writing project," say, "I'm on." If they want you to go to a conference and co-present, say yes. I think the other thing is find your passion.
That's one I think is so important. Then try to have a dream. I think that's crucial, a dream, a dream, and then work and push yourself to take the steps that are necessary to make the dream a reality.
Nice. I think that you can dream and dream big without it being a hindrance to someone else's dream.
Exactly. My guess, Kent, is that you didn't think you would become an ACA president when you were a master's student.
I didn't think I was four years ago.
Yeah, and here you are, and you're doing these podcasts and doing good things and collaborating and making a difference. I think we dream too small.
So many of my students, and that's why I'm in this profession still, so many of my students have gone on and they're doing marvelous things.
In terms of making a different in the world, social interest. They're out there changing the world.
Excellent. With that in mind, what do you think blocks the effectiveness of new clinicians? How come some people don't get to blossom and become the great counselors that they could be? What do you think is blocking that effectiveness?
Well, I think one is we might give in too often to the voices that we hear inside, "Who am I to think I can write a book? Who am I that I think I can go to a conference and give a presentation? Would anybody want to listen to me?" So you got to challenge that crap.
I'm going to write a book with you then. We got to figure out a book that we can write together. I'm going to put you on the spot right now. When you wrote that book with Jude and Julius Austin-
I was like, wow, that you would take somebody under your wings and shepherd them through the writing process and getting their career started in that manner. So not only do you do this work to help all counselors become better counselors. You are also mentoring people into the process of writing and using their voice in the written word as well.
Right, and that book, Counselor Self-Care, Jude and Julius Austin were part of it, and Michelle Muratori, the four of us. She was an undergrad student of mine at Cal State Fullerton.
Many years ago. Now she's at Johns Hopkins University teaching, getting outstanding evals. So the four of us did a keynote on counselor self-care. Yeah, I'll take a little bit of credit for encouraging them, but they've done it themselves.
But I think that's part of it, though. You say a small part, but just getting a word from Gerald Corey as to, "You can do this."
A pat on the back from Gerald Corey that this could happen for you goes a long way.
Yeah, I hope so. I want to encourage people. Don't let failure stop you, because sometimes we put in a proposal for a conference, and it comes back and we say, "Sorry, we're not..." As a matter of fact, I got one rejection or one nonacceptance of a book panel that we've done for 15 years.
I didn't get discouraged about that. I said, "Okay, we don't always get it." But I think too many new professionals will become overwhelmed with what they consider failure, and I think we need to be risk takers.
Risk takers, yes, I believe that one hundred percent. That's really good advice that you shared right there. What was the most significant advice you ever received in your career?
Maybe one thing was, don't let your fear of failure stop you.
I mentioned statistics. That was a big one.
Even when I got my doctorate in 1967, many years back, 1967, when I started seeing clients, I had a job as a counselor in a counseling center at a university. I thought I was worthless as a counselor. I didn't think I was making any difference. Clients weren't getting any better, and I thought, "Maybe I'm in the wrong profession." So discouragement set in. I love Adler, Alfred Adler's idea about encouragement, is what helps people build on their strengths. So I think a piece of advice I got is, "Hang in there. You don't have to do it alone. Reach out for encouragement, support and direction."
Right. So how did you think you worked through the fear?
By talking with colleagues, and Marianne and I talk a lot, and my other colleagues that we presented with, about our beginning fears of, "Do we have anything to say?"
We had that with a few books. We had one book and we got stuck because we said, "Ah, this book is too much like our other books." We were almost going to dump it, but the editor said, "Hang in there a little bit longer. It doesn't have to be a 200-page book. A hundred pages would work." So I think challenging the fear and thinking, "What's the worst thing that can happen?"
No, no, no, go ahead. Finish your thought.
I was just going to say, I think a biggie is having colleagues. I think one of the most important things I've ever done is connection with colleagues, that we co-teach together, some of my former students are co-teaching with me. I have four TAs right now at University of Holy Cross that are teaching, reading papers, so it's not a solo endeavor, and that gives energy.
Well, that's also helping someone else grow in their... from your experiences and things that you bring to the table.
Your book is going into the 11th edition. You're working on that. What evolves in that? How do you stay relevant and new? How do you add to, so that you get to an 11th edition?
Well, I think teaching really helps, because then I get an idea of what excites students. The trouble with theories is they haven't changed all that much, most of them.
But working with good colleagues, I have a chapter on feminist therapy, and my coauthor on that is Barbara Herlihy.
And Carolyn Enns, who's a big name in feminist therapy, has reviewed that chapter and is working more with us to update it, so colleagues are very helpful.
Jim Bitter is a valued colleague, Jim Bitter, Adlerian and family therapist.
He wrote a book for ACA called Theory and Practice of Family Counseling and Couples Counseling. He co-authored the family systems chapter with me, did most of the work, and Adlerian, so that's how I stay relevant.
We have another book that we're working on currently, Marianne and our daughter Cindy. It's Issues and Ethics in the Helping Profession. That's also going to be in the 11th edition. Now, the ethics book is very different, that there are always new challenges.
Social justice is a big issue currently. So one thing we came up with, a new idea, is voices from the field.
Our ethics book. So we've already gotten 35 different voices from the field to come in and write 600 to 800 words about a topic that's in our chapter.
These are all people who've written books for ACA. Nancy Wheeler, who wrote about consulting with colleagues.
Courtland Lee did a piece on social justice and multicultural. Mary Hermann did something on duty to protect and warn, so all these people are authors.
Authors, and that's a neat thing, right?
Gerald Corey is nothing to shake a feather at, right? So you come to someone who's also a writer and who also is contributing to this field, and you can collaborate.
Right. I think what helps is thinking about what are the new challenges out there. The pandemic obviously has really produced major challenges of isolation, and how do you teach and how do you do therapy in person versus online? So we had people who wrote the book, Distance Counseling and Supervision, ebook. They are voices from the field in our ethics book. So that's how I try to, each book, each edition, we try to think of new things to keep it exciting.
Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. One of the things that you are very, very adamant about is work life balance and your personal life. We want to get into that maybe after the break, talking a little bit more about what that's like for you, but I would love to hear from you in terms of your thoughts on why it's important... Before we go to the break, maybe you can give us a couple of snippets of why it's important to be balanced.
Okay. Well, I hope before the end we can talk more about self-care.
I think that's so important, but I don't think we want to be lopsided. I think we want to have a balanced life. Fun, I think that's important. Relationships, that's an important part. Work, meaningful work. I think also getting... this gets into self-care. Adequate rest and exercise is so important.
I think the key there about balance is, I think we have to learn to say no too. I know you get a lot of offers sometimes to go and do keynotes in China or Singapore or whatever, and we had to learn the hard way that we can't say yes to all of this, because nowadays getting on a plane and going international travel is tough on our system. So even attractive offers, we had to say, "I appreciate the offer but I can't do anymore than I can do." So I think learning to say no is important as well as it is to say yes, or to say, "Hey, your invitation is exciting. Let me think about it, and I'll get back with you tomorrow."
Giving it a once over to see if this is really something that is something you're willing to commit and to put into your, I guess, your list of things that you'll continue to do.
Counselors help positively impact lives by providing support, wellness, treatment. We're working to change lives. We are creating a world where every person has access to the quality professional counseling and mental health services needed to thrive.
Welcome back to the Voice of Counseling. This is Dr. S Kent Butler. We're here with the phenomenal Gerry Corey, who was talking a little about work life balance before the break. I really want to ask you what kind of advice do you have for counselors as they continue to navigate the current ongoing challenges with COVID-19, things like the natural disasters that are happening right now, school shootings, of course, and just the fact that there's social injustices all over the place. What are some of your tidbits of information? What's your wisdom that you can share for counselors?
Well, I think it's easy to get overwhelmed with all that we cannot do.
Because we might say, "Oh my gosh, what can I do about racial injustice? What can I do about White supremacy? What can I do about 1 million new cases of COVID each day, 1.4 million," you know? Then we get overwhelmed and we say, "I can't do anything." Maybe what we need to do is focus on what we can do and realize that even small steps are important. Again, I think it helps so much to have colleagues that we can talk to and process. We may not be able to see our colleagues as often as we would like, but we can Zoom with them, and that's better than saying, "Well, I've got to be isolated."
I've got to be isolated. As you were saying that, one of the things that came up for me was, counselors need to learn how, and I say this a lot, get out of their own way.
I think, that's what I picked up on what you, when you were saying those things is, we make it about us too many times, that we then are not seeing the forest for the trees.
Yeah. Yeah, we get in our own way a lot, and I think we need to challenge that.
Definitely challenge that. When you think about self-care, I know because I know that you've shared that you are an avid walker. You ride a bike. You take care of yourself. You get your rest when you need to. What is it about self-care, and when did it come into your life to be so impactful, especially to the point where you are... You are so vulnerable in sharing what you do to try to help people in their own journey.
Yeah. Well, I think exercise, let's just take that. That's only one problem. I have a physician, and he's a very holistic wellness-oriented physician, not just pushing medicine. He was interviewed recently about what is wellness and wellbeing, and he said, "There are four pillars of it." I like that. He said, "First of all, nutrition."
I think we can't afford just to eat fast food and skip meals. We need to pay attention to what we take in. That's so important, what we drink and eat. Secondly is exercise. He says we're meant to move. If we just ignore that totally, we're going to pay a price. We're not going to be able to maintain stamina or physical health.
He said the third component is restorative sleep. I don't think we can afford to pull all-nighters too often.
Maybe when you're a young college student, but at my age, I don't think that would work. So I think I need to get adequate rest and sleep. The last one, very important, stress management. So much is written about, we cannot eliminate stress from our life. Our life is stressful, let's face it, but I think we can learn to control it, either stress controls-
Allow what we let in and what we don't let in.
Because of that stress piece.
Sometimes students will say about self-care or stress management, or new professionals say this, "I've got to get tenure. I've got to write so many things. I've got to go to meetings. I've got to do all of this." Well, okay, but maybe, how can we have the courage to be imperfect? That's important too. I don't think we have to be perfect.
I think there are a lot of things we can do by way of stress management that don't cost anything. Meditation can be one of those. Mindfulness, trying to do one thing at a time rather than multitask.
Listening to good music, maybe playing music. One of my colleagues plays a bass fiddle professionally.
Or having fun. Reality therapists talk about human needs. One of them is having fun and not feeling guilty about doing something that we enjoy doing. Relationships, our personal relationships with family, friends, and colleagues.
That's vital. If we don't do that, we're going to burn out.
One of my colleagues wrote a book, Mark Stebnicki, and it's called ACA Counseling During an Age of the Various Phases of a Pandemic. By the way, he's going to be one of my speakers in ethics.
Good, good, good, good. I got a chance to talk with him not too long ago.
Yeah. He's going to talk about that topic. That's scary.
But what can we do? We're going to go tonight to a concert, a philharmonic. We're wearing a mask. We've been fully vaccinated and boosted, and everybody who goes to the concert has to show proof of vaccination and wear a mask.
It's either that or not go to anything.
We go to another concert tomorrow night. I think we're-
Gerald Corey, at 84, is getting it in, people, he's getting it in. He's not playing.
So I think balance is important, having fun. I must admit, when I first started I threw myself into my work.
Because I got excited about it and I tried to do everything, writing, teaching, directing a program, workshops all over the country and internationally. I could do that at 30 and 35 and 40 and even 50, but then I realized maybe I need to take some things off the plate. I can't do it all at once.
I was listening to you name off the four things. Just even sitting here, there are things that I could do to improve, to improve what's happening. I think that goes back to that mindfulness piece, and that goes back to being really, not necessarily methodical, but at least being discerning enough to know that it's important to take these things seriously, to make sure that we're not hurting ourself more than... Because we impact our lives by the things that we do, the things that we take in.
Exactly. I think that by way of exercise, for example, you just said is we don't have to do something that's drudgery. We need to find something we can enjoy. Maybe walking in nature briefly, or some people like jogging. Now, I hate that. When I see people do that, I say, "Oh my gosh, I couldn't do that." They're jogging faster than I'm bike riding.
I tried to jog one time in life, and I felt like I was being weighted down to the world. I was like, "What is happening? My legs don't want to move forward. What's happening here?" It's like, there are some people, but if I did it outside, it was worse. If I did it on a treadmill, I was great. So that was really funny, but my big thing now is riding bikes. I've been riding-
Yeah. Then I think we can become addicted to it. William Glasser, reality therapy, talked about positive addictions. One of them can be exercise.
You don't have to be a exercise freak. I exercised 17 hours a week the last six years as an average.
Yeah. But you don't also have to do somebody else's routine.
I used to go to the gym and I would see two people walk around. I would see one that looks like Hercules and one that looks like Pee-wee Herman, and they'd be walking around together, and they'd be doing the same exercises, right? I'm like, "One's working for one and one's not working for the other." So you have to find your thing, find what you need to be doing.
Maybe that's okay for them, but it seems like when you sit around doing some that's exercise or doing something that benefits the one person, well, what about what's benefits you?
Exactly. Yeah. I think we should challenge that myth about I don't have time.
Well, we may not have time for an hour a day, but maybe we can find 20 minutes a day four times a week. Anything is better than nothing.
Right. That's really funny that you say that, because I've been going out on my bicycle these past three days, and I've only been able to get in 45 minutes of riding, but I typically try to do an hour or more, right?
So I could easily have said to myself, "Ah, you don't have a full hour, so don't go."
Forty-five minutes is good. It is. I had to rethink that. I had to think about out how I was allowing myself to manipulate myself out of doing what I needed to do or what I could do in the time that I did have that I could allot to it.
Right. Right. This costs money, but prevention is important. I'm into acupuncture. I went yesterday, with needles all over, but that really helps because I had some knee pain. I don't have knee pain now. I can bike ride, walk without that. So prevention is more important than waiting till we fall apart and then trying-
Forward thinking, yeah, that's what we need.
Yes. Pilates, Joseph Pilates, started... In fact, I have that on my resume. I got the Joseph Pilates Award in 2012, my Pilates, who gave me that, I put that on my resume. I thought that would be fun.
That keeps your core moving and [inaudible 00:42:26] folds.
So I think Pilates is a very good way to avoid back surgery, for example. So I think there are ways that we can take care of ourselves if we put ourselves on the map, and I don't think that's being selfish. If I want to take care of my students or my clients, I'm not going to be any good if they're getting the leftovers. I've got to have something to give them.
I like that. If I'm giving you leftovers, it's not nutritious. It's not whole. Well, it could be nutritious. I don't want people to stop eating in leftovers, but leftovers, in some cases, is less than maybe what that full meal was when it first came out.
Yeah. I think if we're all running on empty and we're completely burnt out, I think it's going to be very hard to be present for our client. I think if there's anything that's important, it's our presence. Whether we're teaching or working with clients, it's showing up and being a real human being and engaging.
So when you think about the stature of Gerry Corey in the counseling profession right now, do you ever ponder about how you got here, how you got to be who you are today?
Not too often. It always surprises me when somebody gives me accolades, but I think, if anything, I followed my interests, and I suppose, and my excitement and my passion. Amazing things happened about that. I started doing workshops in Ireland, for example. So I think just simply following a passion and an interest is what's kept me saying, "Hey, I never thought I would be doing workshops in another country or writing a book."
Yeah. So along those lines, in your book, Personal Reflections on Counseling, you share a lot of nuggets of wisdom, things that you have gained over the time. One of the things, you are unapologetically true to who you are and you are very open. You are willing to say, "Hey, I'm an 84-year-old man who is doing this work still, planning on continuing to do this work here in the mental health field." Can you share one, two nuggets for our listeners to take away?
Well, let me see. One of them would be, and I said this already, don't limit ourselves. Don't limit yourself by thinking, "Oh, I never could write a book or a chapter." What do you have to lose if you engage in a project and it doesn't go the way you want it? All right. So that's one. I think another nugget or gem, if you want to call it, is don't try to do things that are just self-enhancing. Think about how we can make this world a bit better of a place. I think that's where thinking, "Okay, I can't do everything, but I can do some things." That's my greatest joy, working with people that were undergraduate students that are now making a difference in the profession. So I see that they've challenged themselves. They've been willing to risk. They've gotten mentors. We realize we don't do it alone, that this is a project that we can enjoy with colleagues.
Right. Also, one of the things that you're saying, I'm thinking, you do it so that others can enjoy it too.
It's really being selfless with yourself and what gifts you have that you can offer so that others can also grow and learn and be, I guess, impacted by what you're able to share.
Right. I think it's reciprocal. I surely get something from teaching a class at University of Holy Cross and going to ACA and presenting, and I missed that in the last two years. Even doing this. I think it helps us not to think, "Oh my gosh, what if I said something and it was stupid?" If I censor myself too much, I'm not going to... I want to be creative.
Well, that's the beauty of vulnerability, right?
Because if you say something that you thought that you might not have said... When you're able to be vulnerable in that moment and actually come back and say, "This is what I meant by this," or this is this, this and that, that's the authenticity in that, and people see that.
We don't need a fake apology. We need a real apology in terms of something that, if you say something that might have been offensive or whatever have you, but I hear you with that. That's powerful. So we're coming up on the end of our time, but I want to ask you, and you're probably going to tell me that you don't think of this maybe, but what is your legacy?
I think I wrote about that in the Personal Reflections in Counseling book, I was asked, and I ask students sometimes, "What would you like your legacy to be?"
One of the awards I got, and I was teasing with it, at ACA a number of years ago, Jon Carlson, the late Jon Carlson, gave a half a dozen of us an ACA Living Legends Award, Living Legends, and I always said, "I'd rather be a living legend than a dead legend."
I suppose the most important thing is, I'd like to see that my work doesn't stop with me. It doesn't begin with me. It doesn't end with me, that somehow if I'm working with students, that they find their own voice, they find their own God-given talents. That's so important. We each have talents. That they find those talents and then nurture it and be willing to develop and be who they are and accept people and take small steps towards making a difference in the world. So the biggest thing would be making a difference, not even getting awards. I don't put too much stock in awards. I think more important than awards are knowing that we're making a difference, knowing that we're touching lives for the better.
And helping people to become the person that they would like to become. I think that's what it's all about, and I think teachers could do that and counselors could do that. We're in this business not to cure people but to help them become who they can become.
That's why you're who you are.
Well, I hope so. There's only-
Because you are so powerful in terms of what you represent and how you make the field of counseling so proud to do the work that we do, because you helped us. Somewhere deep in the work that I do when I'm teaching, when I'm counseling, when I'm doing all these other things, there's a piece of you in that for me.
That's powerful and that's the legacy that I think you will continue, like you said, you wanted to continue on. Well, I still want to learn from you. I want to be in one of your classes one of these days, but I can say that having the opportunity to speak with you, to talk with you, to hear from you, to have you sow into me in other ways, as a colleague, as a counselor, and I think I can call you my friend-
... it's powerful. It's very, very powerful, and so thank you, Gerry Corey, for being who you are. Thank you for allowing yourself to be a part of our experiences in counseling. Thank you. Thank your wife. Thank all of-
She does. She does. We always have to give homage to the women and the people, our partners in our life. So I really, really want to thank you for taking the time out and just being a part of the podcast today, because your words matter and they've always mattered. Your textbooks are full of words that have helped a lot of us to become the counselors that we have become, so thank you.
Well, I sure have appreciated our way of working together, and I have to say I've enjoyed our work here. So I appreciate and thank you very much for invited me.
Well, thank you for agreeing to be here.
This has been the Voice of Counseling. I'm Dr. S Kent Butler. Today we had the phenomenal Gerry Corey, and we'll see you next time.
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