SCL

I’ve just recently started seeing a counsellor, after being coaxed and almost bludgeoned into it by a couple of friends with counseling experience. I’m grateful, even though I just about have to force myself through the door every week.

I really hope I don’t run into anyone like the people you’re talking about, I think I’d run out screaming. P

being a counselor, it’s been an exercise in semantics, to get a friend to spill. i can’t say “tell me more” or “how do you feel about that?”
if i slip and do say the above, i get the look of “no you didn’t try to half-nelson me with the counseling moves!”

Anon -
Thanks for commenting. I have great respect for what people like you do and admire your willingness to join people in what can often be their toughest moments.

I would tell your friends exactly what you just told me. I would say, “This is weird because I am a counselor by trade, but if you had a hole in your roof and I were a roofer, you would want me to help you look at the leak.”

Jon

“Our society isn’t built for long term investment in relationships” –or, I might add, in much of anything else. Instant gratification, instant expertise in whatever we have heard about or experienced briefly.

I invested eight years in college and a lifetime honing the skills of my profession, yet I have encountered high school dropouts in curlers and flipflops who knew more about my business than I did.

It is, as LBJ said, The Great Society.

I love it: talking sushi until the interloper gives up.

I love doing this! I had a total of ONE counseling sessions, but you betcha I’m an expert! i.e. Did you know God gave Adam a job before He gave him a wife? That’s why my husband –and yours and your and your — is a workaholic.

Idea for a post: Christians like to leave servers tracts instead of (decent) tips. I blogged on this subject myself, but I’d love your input.

How true!!!! I recently found myself on both sides of this issue; I gave advice that I shouldn’t have and it really blew up in my face!!! I have never sought counseling but the person/persons I gave advice to has, and suggested that I see someone because I was ‘disturbed’, even going as far to write a very slanderous letter to another family member about me!! Does this person have a degree to back up their “diagnoses”? No!! The more I tried to resolve the issue the more confused they were and still are about what I was saying in the first place. Well I just chalked it up to a very valuable life lesson and learned that there is more than one person in this world who deserves the nickname “Stonewall” besides Mr. Jackson.

Funny blog site!!

I find it interesting that you would combine sushi and counseling into one post. It is perhaps that you, like me, have issues with your white father and your japanese mother? Perhaps you need counseling. I myself am haunted by childhood memories of family fishing trips where my father would get angry with my mother because she kept eating the bait…
BTW – I really DO have a Japanese mother, so I can make these comments without being labeled a racist. I am, after all, making fun of myself (and a few million other people; but who’s counting?)

Thanks for this post! I am seeing a counselor right now and it is so tempting for me to “share what I’ve learned” with friends.

At the same time, it was only through persistent counsel of friends that I finally went to see a professional counselor.

Anyone need a recommendation for a good Christian counselor (female) in the Seattle area, email theteasnob at comcast dot net.

This reminds me of what happened when I saw the “Body Worlds” exhibit at a science museum, which features real human organs (from cadavers of course) that have been plasticized. For whatever reason, every single person there picked out some part of the body that they were an expert on. It was ridiculous. Like the guy who once heard something about how kidneys work from his nephrologist (kidney-doctor) friend – he was an instant expert on kidneys. Made me wonder why anyone came if they already knew everything!

Since you offered – do you know any good Christian counselors in Nashville? Preferably one that is female? I don’t know where to look.

i know of a really good counselor that loves eating sushi in stephenville. he’s been eating sushi for 10 yrs but hasn’t been counseling that long. but you know sushi is most important.

I have been counselled by someone who had no qualifications in counselling. It always ends up in a bad wrap. Lesson learnt.

I love talking to people about their problems… Ok, ok, I really just like having the opportunity to expound upon my own collegiate foray into alcohol abuse, depression, and subsequent counseling/recovery. Now that I think about it, I also love to talk about how I used to be an atheist and “didn’t grow up in the church.” It is like I’m trying to earn emo street cred or something.

I eat California Rolls. Does this mean I need to see a Counsellor? hahahaha

I LOVE what Katdish said- but that’s because I’m a hapagirl myself! And just for the record, I don’t like sushi all that much- only California roll! Now I’m wondering if that is some kind of insight to my inner resentment of not getting enough of the Japanese genes that I wanted but didn’t get (ie. petite build, genius brain, non freckled skin!)?!?! I better go ask a few of those people who already know all those answers! Just think- I won’t have any kind of insurance card to present or any co-pay to pay! Maybe I can just take them out for sushi!

Your blog is making me want to blog, too! I’ve just been hanging out in my myspace world and blogging there, but I’m getting inspired to jump in the blog pond soon!

Heard that! When I was in high school a friend of mine went to a chiropractor. The next day he had me lie down on my side and then proceeded to twist my head until my neck cracked. Messed my neck up for years!

Leave it to those who are trained!

I am not a counsellor but everyone I know seems to think I am. I guess it is because I listen. I don’t exactly mind people telling me all their problems and I suppose I don’t even mind too much that they seem to expect me to give them some sort of qualified answer. It is just that sometimes I’d like to have someone to talk to ha ha ha! I suppose I need to see a counsellor. I probably should just so I have the right answers for the people in my life. I do know a roofer though so maybe I’ll just ask him.

btw, I wanted to send the link someone posted on here of the boy who gave that speech and I don’t remember which post it is on. Can anyone help me find it?

Or there’s the other side of the story on this one: The friend who says, “Why go to counseling, when all you really need is JESUS!” Seriously, when I told some people I was going to grad school to be a counselor, a lady questioned the need for counselors in the face of an all-loving, all-healing God. Amazing.

I’m having that exact problem with a friend right now. She’s an accountant who fancies herself a counselor who needs to tell you what to do, but needs no input from anyone else about her life. It’s hurtful to be on the receiving end of narcissism.

Your Fight Club reference was particularly timely and funny. My Bride and I just got back from a “Marriage Encounter” weekend. This a Christian marriage retreat that happens all over the country so if you have the opportunity to go I highly reccomend it. However, they’re pretty secretive about the whole event leading up to it and you’re not supposed to talk about the specifics of the weekend with others that want to know about it. So between session’s I was constantly thinking about a “Marriage Encounter” Post for SCL comparing it to Fight Club b/c most of the interal wrestling is with your self and the first rule of “Marriage Encounter” is “Don’t talk about Marriage Encounter”

Has anyone attended one of these weekends before and like to comment? Jon, it might be worth it for your and your Bride if you get the chance at the very least it could be material for a great post.

“On some level I think it’s because we had a good experience at counseling and want to share that with you.”

That’s exactly what it is.

I’m been in counseling off and on for most of my life so to me I think I could share some info. LOL. But I don’t. Because most people don’t want to hear it. And when you’re volunteering to help someone who didn’t ask and doesn’t want it, you’ve probably caused more harm than good. I learned this the hard way from my wife.

Uh oh, I AM one of those people who are insta-experts at something after trying it once.
I think people are catching on to my amazing ability to thoroughly learn something after just one time experiencing it. Kind of like that one time I became a prophet after we had that awesome spiritual gifts sermon. And I mean like right after the sermon! It was amazing! I was like prophesizing (propheteering?) like there is no tomorrow.
Seriously, kind of reminds me those awesome action/sci-fi/kungfu movies I used to watch as a kid, and right after that you start thinking you can do the awesome kungfu moves, and shoot lasers from your eyeballs..and such..
Anyone else?

Im way off tangent here, aren’t I?

is this kind of like my sister-in-law who had a baby seven weeks before i did last year and now likes to demonstrate her “superior” parenting skills and give me “words of wisdom” from her “extensive experience” even though she’s four years younger than me and didn’t take half the classes i did in preparation?

sorry, friend who went to counseling once, that WAS a little judgmental and passive-aggressive, wasn’t it?

Some of it may be that I want to make sure that your just as messed up as I am, so I’m going to test out a few of the questions I got asked at counselling. The we can all be messed up and hang together.

I knew someone once whose idea of having a “real” conversation post-counseling-type-experience became calling the woman who used to be her best friend and telling this other woman everything that was awful about her. And then seemed surprised when the other woman only pulled back more.

Everything would have worked out better if they had only known the campfire trick beforehand.

I did some training in social work, which is really a mix of a lot of disciplines on top of some psychology and communication.

The irony? I spent a lot of time in counseling during my adolescence. So I think I can be of service to others in that fashion. (and have never been shy about presenting myself in that manner)

I got out into secular practice and couldn’t do it. The same gift/skill/whatever that lets me sit there and listen to others and analyse things failed me when it came to doing it for paid employment. (The beginning of the famine period!)

My favourite moment usually comes when people meet me and discover that I studied social work; or ‘counselling’ as they put it. And either try to get me to start counselling them, or ask my opinion on various random theories and bodies of knowledge, expecting that I know lots about them having studied ‘something related’!

The further irony is that the thought of counselling someone right now results in ‘But who counsels me? Who cares for the carers?’ and a lot of anger.

Definitely hit a nail on the head there Jon.

As a counsellor myself I think we need to acknowledge some stuff. Everybody is entitled to their privacy. If you use counselling ‘tricks’ to make your friends tell you more than they wanted to you are invading their privacy. If you are good enough friends they will tell you anyway or you can always preface a counsellor moment by telling them it’s coming. At least then they know what’s happening and can stop it if they want to.

sea urchin DOES have a very strange consistency