...and so 45 approaches

Man, the older I get, the more I dislike the weeks before my birthday. It's not because I have issues with aging, it's because I have issues with remembering. It only makes sense that with each passing year, I have another 365 days of memories to ponder: good, bad or indifferent. Parts of my past slip just a bit further away. Sometimes I'm happy to have memories fade into a whiter shade of pale, sometimes I'm sad that milestones of my life are even further away from my present, like watching a boat cross the horizon that is that much harder to moor back at shore.
When I graduated with my Master's degree 5 years ago, I had developed a "five year plan" for the first time in my life. That plan was to apply to PhD programs when I turned 44 and starting a Forensic Psychology PhD program the fall semester of 2016, just months after my 45th birthday. Well, let me tell you: Shit happens and five year plans fall by the wayside. Priorities change, career opportunities present themselves (or not), your grandmother becomes a full time nursing home resident, the home where the absolute best of your childhood memories gets sold and you feel as if the planks that make up your life begin to separate and float away so you cling to whatever you find  just to prevent yourself from drowning in life on life's terms-not your own terms.
Which brings me to today: four days from my 45th birthday.
Some spectacular things have happened to me professionally this year: I got a promotion to be LSS's School Based Mental Health Coordinator. I spoke at a WAFCA (Wisconsin Association of Family & Children's Agencies) training about what it's like to be a licensed professional counselor in recovery. Today I received news that I am going to be a key-note speaker at the state convention for speech therapists and pathologists in February 2017 about trauma informed care-I'll be presenting for 1 1/2 hours to approximately 200 people. I've been interviewed by a local reporter about state government support for school based mental health. A colleague I worked with as an Older Adult Counselor published a book which includes my interview about depression and older adults. I've never felt more satisfied in my career as I do now. This is significant for two reasons:
1) I really thought that working with psychopathology in the state prison system was one of my "dream jobs" and working there would fulfill me intellectually so I tried that for six months in 2013 and discovered that it was not the place for me, for a number of reasons I've outlined in previous blog posts; 2) When I was in grad school, I completed a paper on the population I'd least like to work with, which was teens and adolescents and here I am, five years later absolutely in love with the students I counsel two days a week at a local high school and working to develop and expand school based mental health services at schools across the state.
Personally I've faced challenges this year, as everyone does. The two most significant being the only income provider at home due to my husband's depression and anxiety which has prevented him from working since January 2015. He's in the process of applying for SSDI due to PTSD. The second may sound somewhat trivial, but rocked my world when I checked my Linked In account in early February and discovered that "Paul G, MD from Montana" had recently viewed my profile. Sometimes I view him as a bad penny that won't go away and leave me the fuck alone and other times I long to re-establish any type of contact with him, "knowing" that we'd somehow reconcile, despite the fact that we're both married to other people. In therapy I refer to these thoughts as "Julia Roberts movie moments" which are completely unrealistic, but drag my heart into believing it's possible. These thoughts fuck with my mind in a major way despite the amount of time that's passed since we've spoken, much less were in a romantic relationship with each other. It's the nagging thoughts of "what if" that I'm finally processing in therapy. I've danced around it for decades (I know, it's a crazily long amount of time) but my counselor kicks ass and keeps me on task to finally deal with whatever I need to do to come to terms with this relationship.
So as my 45th birthday approaches, here I am: focusing on all of the achievements I've made this year and acknowledging what I need to work on to live a more balanced life. I know there will be more achievements and more challenges during the 365 days between 45 and 46, but for the first time in a long time, I feel prepared to welcome them both.

My "official" LSS website photo.

Mental Health Inside the Walls: Resignation

Having never worked in a prison, when I began my career at my former employer on 05-20-13, I didn't know what to expect. I was excited and ready to begin working with inmates in a therapeutic way; building rapport, identifying their issues, drawing on past experiences inmates could provide where they acted appropriately, managed their emotions, and made effective decisions.  I wanted to use various therapeutic interventions to help inmates develop whatever it was in their lives that they lacked – challenging distorted thinking, processing emotions, building self-esteem, working through past traumas, all in a supportive, safe environment.

That is not the type of therapy practiced where I formerly worked. In fact, I had been told multiple times that “there is no therapy (on the block where I worked)” which likely makes the block function better to provide the structure it does.

I, however, am not the type of counselor who can walk into an interaction with a client with the direction to “never trust an inmate” who is, for all intents and purposes, my client, shading the entire session. Maybe it’s inexperience or maybe it’s naiveté that prevents me from entering and maintaining that mindset for 8 hours. Or, maybe it’s believing in the intrinsic good in people, having both compassion and empathy for my clients and letting my clients know that.

I will be the first to admit that I am an open and out-going person.  I like to get to know my clients to better put whatever it is that they came to see me about into context. Outside of therapy, I am opinionated, loud and generally always include my input in any discussion. Those may not be traits for a successful counselor in this environment, but they have served me well up to this point.

I am a damn good counselor. That much I know is true. I professionally relish in participating in sessions with clients that move forward, that don’t rehash the same topics and complaints again and again, where even if progress is painful, it’s still progress.  I don’t believe that this type of therapy is what’s needed in my former role. Which is neither good nor bad, it’s just a difference between who I am and what is needed to fulfill that role.

I am slowly gaining what I believe is a sense of relief since being informed that my tenure there has ended.  Although I found it comforting when a psychologist once told me that he hated every day of his first year of work there, I don’t want to hate coming to work every day. I don’t want to work in an environment where I am routinely called a “fucking bitch” or a “fat bitch” or any other of the numerous insults I have endured while working there. I don’t want to work in an environment where men do walk around in their cells naked and that I need to be prepared to deal with that. That is a skill set I don’t currently posses, nor do I think I ever want to.

I have learned more about myself as a professional counselor and as a person in my short tenure there, and I am grateful for that. Sometimes in order to discover what one does want in life, one has to first discover what one doesn’t want. I’m still academically and intellectually intrigued by the experience of incarceration on people and the role of psychopathy development in people, especially those with a lengthy history of personal trauma, however I am now much more aware that these are my academic and research interests, not necessarily my employment interests.

"Some birds just aren't meant to caged; their feathers are just too bright. And when you set them free, your soul rejoices because they never should have been caged in the first place." 

I am no longer caged.

The Final Countdown

In approximately 5 hours, my 30's will be over and I will enter my fifth decade of life.
I feel a sense of duty to acknowledge this milestone and I will with a celebration combining my birthday and my recent graduation on Sunday. If I had to do my 30's all over again, would I? I would say an unequivocal "No," but I wouldn't answer as quickly as I would if invited to re-live my 20's. Who the hell wants to do that again??
I feel that I have really grown into becoming the woman I knew I could be and was supposed to be, throughout the past decade. My teen-age years were filled with the requisite amount of angst, I made some life-changing, horrific mistakes in my 20's, and although I certainly made mistakes during the past decade, my vision has slowly become clearer and my picture of who I am and where I belong in the world is markedly sharper. I attribute most of that clarity to the last several years which I've spent in graduate school. While learning to become a therapist, it's inevitable that one review ones' life in therapeutic terms: What motivates me? How do I define happiness? How can I confront others with empathy? How do I respond to being confronted or critiqued? How gentle, comfortable, and accepting could I be with my feelings, and am I gentle, comfortable, and accepting with my feelings now? There are probably a dozen more examples I could give of how studying to become a therapist has prompted me to re-examine and re-frame my own life. Socrates believed that "the unexamined life is not worth living." I wouldn't go that far in support of internal insight, because I've met plenty of clients, fellow students, and other folks that spend so much time engaged in self-reflection that it quadruples their current anxiety, depression, obsessions, etc.
I'm happy to be turning 40 tomorrow. Happy because I'm still vertical and not "sleeping in eternal rest." Happy because I've come so far in re-establishing a life for myself after moving back to this area in 2002 when I was horribly active in my addition. And I'm probably most happy because I have a meaningful life surrounded by the unconditional love and support of family and friends and a career that I feel I have been "called" to do. Although I've struggled and survived heartbreaks, I've also relished in the joy of accomplishment, loving others and being loved in return, and knowing within my soul who I am and what I stand for.
Happy Birthday to me.