ACA MEMBER BLOGS

Despite my respectful intentions, in that moment, I felt awful. The ‘southern girl’ in me typically addresses everyone as ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’, based on facial recognition. I have used these terms of endearment for years without question.

It seems that every day brings a new troubling narrative to our screens in 2019. It’s enough to make many individuals decide that they want to opt-out of watching the news, and on many days, who can blame them? Hate, polarized commentary, and fear-mongering all dominate headlines and the morning news. The way these things impact the counseling profession cannot be ignored.

As we conclude this blog series on Complementary and Alternative Modalities for counselors, we would like to share a few resources to help you explore CAM and counseling further. Below are a variety of resources we believe are great starting places. We have used many of these resources at various points on our journey.

Last month I had the wonderful opportunity to co-present and co-facilitate with four other counselors of color at a conference focused on college mental health in New York. The title of the presentation was “A Roundtable Discussion on Race and Ethnicity among College Mental Health Professional Staff” and we were thrilled that over forty people attended our session.

Double clicking the mouse, spanking the monkey, wanking, petting the kitty, choking the chicken, flicking the bean… whatever you may call it, there seems to be a level of embarrassment surrounding the topic of masturbation and discussing personal engagement in solo sexual activity.

Who out there is a believer that everyone must do agency work after graduate school, and that new clinicians shouldn’t enter the workforce through private practice? I hear a lot of you saying “preach sister, yes you must must must do agency work first” and I get it, I really do. But then I hear some others out there saying “nah, do as you want, it’s your life, your career, and your choice”.

While it may seem that acceptance for the LGBTQ+ community is on the rise, there still remains a mental health crisis for many LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly for transgender and gender non-binary people (The Trevor Project, 2019).

Have you ever seen any of the emojis above in your teen’s chat history? Have you ever observed some of the dating rituals of the 21st century for teens while dropping off or picking up your teen from high school? How about at the mall, restaurants, or at the movie theater? As a natural people watcher I do admit I take time to observe some of these teens’ behaviors.

The CDC defines infertility as “not being able to get pregnant (conceive) after one year (or longer) of unprotected sex.” About 12% of those individuals trying to get pregnant have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term.

The American Counseling Association has been supportive of complementary and alternative modalities through many means, but the primary home for CAM is found within the Association of Creativity and Counseling (ACC). ACC celebrates many forms of creativity including expressive arts, interpersonal/relational approaches, the human-animal bond, nature-based therapies, play therapy, and CAM.