Stephanie Adams

Counselor interns, are you running out of money to pay your bills? Stressing about how slowly you have to go in your internship hours because you’re still working your full-time hours? Living on borrowed cash from relatives or a credit card company?

Have you ever had a really awful experience with a business? I know you have. Take a minute to recall that experience. What did it feel like? What did you want to do after it was over? Write a bad review on Yelp? Complain to your best friend? Burst into tears?

Most of the time, when I am passing by the George Bush Drive and Wellborn Road intersection in College Station, TX, I am on my way to the fitness center I joined last month. I am thinking about how I will get through an hour of painful Zumba. From now on, whether I want to or not, I will be thinking about the deaths that occurred there on August 13, 2012.

I tend to have a soapbox about therapy as a profession. You may have heard it. It goes like this: You don’t hear the words “innovate” and “therapy practice” together all that often.” ~ From my bog post Innovative Therapy, July 14, 2011. Sometimes, I’m glad to be wrong.

That’s exactly the situation David Mitchell Schwartz, 44, faced at Webster University. He’s filed a lawsuit against the university, who (allegedly) told Schwartz he “lacked empathy.” His story made a big splash in the news, and I think any counseling student needs to check it out. (Links are at the end of the article.) He believes that his criticism comes more from his (supposedly) anonymous commentary on a professor’s romantic relationship with a member of the administration than from a genuine concern about his ability as a counselor. Even if there is a genuine concern, he states that the situation was handled poorly from the beginning.