Susan Jennifer Polese

I recently watched the original film version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” and it was as funny and touching as when I first saw it. Viewing the classic flick as a counselor-in-training I have rediscovered Felix as a person with obsessive compulsive disorder who would benefit from a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and medication. And Oscar? Clearly Mr. Madison has executive functioning challenges and really could use some help from a professional organizer. On a more psychoanalytical note: I don’t even want to consider how either of these two were toilet trained!

As I embark on the middle leg of my second year of graduate school in clinical mental health counseling a course looms on the horizon that I’m simultaneously excited about and simply wish I didn’t have to take at all. That class is Intro to Psychopathology with an emphasis on psychopharmacology. Both words are packed with oomph and leave me with an array of mixed feelings.

In the latest issue of Counseling Today there is a great article exploring counselors in transition by Lynne Shallcross, a senior writer at the publication. This cover article is a tour de force focusing on interviews with various counselors in certain phases and experiencing different transitions in their careers. As I read and thoroughly enjoyed the piece I pondered my own impending transition: that one being from the classroom to an internship in the fall - which will be the start of my final year of graduate school. Hmm, it gives me the willies just thinking about it.

It may be one of the most over-used words of 2011. It has been a staple in Oprah’s particular brand of psychobabble. It is “acceptance.” And it’s a loaded word. In the past for me it brought up some new-age connotations and some walls as well. In some respects, at first glance, acceptance can be seen as a form of giving up. A kind of “this is the way it is” hiding under a thin veil of “and we can’t change it.” But that’s a first glance and though you may fall in love at first sight understanding a powerful concept like acceptance requires more time and an open mind.

I was six years old running with a wild pack comprised of my thirteen cousins, equal parts boys and girls, at our Grandmother's farm in upstate New York. As our mother's drank coffee and chatted and our dad's played poker and tried to solve the world's problems me and my kin were not only allowed, but required to play outside and amuse ourselves. We were not supervised, which by today's standards seems unthinkable. I am not one to romanticize the past – my male cousins were unruly boys and I found them twenty-five percent fascinating and seventy percent frightening. I was a partially undecided.