Doc Warren

Thoughts of the last two weeks fill my head and I have been fighting two divergent ideas: to share a personal crisis in this blog or simply pretend that nothing had happened. A client unwittingly provided the answer and taught me a valuable lesson in the area of a counselor being a person as well as a professional. I will try to elaborate in the space below.

Sometimes we do something big that makes a deep and lasting impact on those we serve; other times we do something much smaller but that still can have an impact. While we cannot always go big, the small stuff can add up to so much. We have all read of the power of positive thinking, the impact of a smile, kind word or even a welcoming posture and how they can make a difference, but have you ever thought of the potential impact of something more passive, smaller than even a smile but just as easy?

As clinicians we do what we can to prepare for the unpreparable; we want to try to be ready for whatever our clients throw at as. We study the literature, consult with other professionals, read case studies and do whatever we can to be ready for the call that means a crisis has occurred. But what happens when the call comes and it is not a crisis from without but from within? Are any of us prepared for a crisis from within our own walls? Are we prepared for an untimely death? Are we prepared for a suicide? Can we ever truly be prepared?

“What color is your parachute” is perhaps the most read book when it comes to career counseling; one that I believe is used in many career counseling classes and was once a staple in my loaned book bookcase until it failed to be returned. The replacement copy soon joined the first one and I started to just refer people to the book rather than loan it. In the book we learned about the three boxes of life and how most of us are taught to segment our lives into sections, each with a unique focus. We learn as kids that our focus is education, when we become adults we enter the work stage and then if we are lucky enough to make it to retirement we begin the leisure stage. Bolles, who wrote the text and updates it annually proposed the concept of merging the corners of these boxes so that they overlap as much as possible; think of it as a “twofer” or threefer” if you will.

I love working with clients about as much as I love teaching and guiding clinicians in training. Long ago I was taught a valuable lesson on knowing when enough is enough or when things are too much for our clients. We are all taught how to read physical and verbal cues in counseling 101 and related classes. We learn the value of subtlety that can be gleaned from the posture, mannerisms, choice of words and related things that our clients do (which is why I am not a fan of phone or internet counseling unless there is an urgent need that prevents in person counseling, but that is for another time).