Thankful

Greetings friends, I hope everything is going extremely well for you this holiday season. Happy Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving is very special for me. I am spending the week with my family and a good friend of mine in Lewis. Lewis is about two and half hours out side of Baltimore Maryland.Tomorrow we will sit down and enjoy a very good meal together. This will be a Thanksgiving feast will be somewhat non-traditional. I have never been into the whole traditional type of thing, because I live a unconventional lifestyle. However one thing that is not going to break away from tradition is spending time with my family.

Family something that is extremely important to me. It does not matter what type of food that we eat, because we will be together as a family. I am encouraging each and every one of you to spend time with loved ones this holiday season. If you can’t be with your family, and then surround yourself with people that love and care about you. Eat lots of food. Watch some great football. Spend time with people that you love. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved one.

Get involved: the importance of joining professional organizations

A s a graduate student we discuss the importance of becoming involved in professional organizations. My professor taught me the importance of this. However I did not listen to them. I am beginning to recognize that I should’ve listened to them a long time ago. I am happy to say that I have finally decided to get involved in professional organizations related to the mental health counseling profession.

I went to a meeting of the Suncoast mental health counseling Association. This association is the organization that represents mental health counseling professionals in a six County region. They host training related to the profession I am involved with. They are a affiliate of the Florida mental health counseling Association and the American mental health counseling Association. I am happy to say that I am now a member of this organization. This is something that I should of gone a long time ago.

I have been involved in cases recently who are members of my profession took advantage of the clients that they serve. They violated the sacred trust that a client places in us. I trust that said that I will not take advantage of you because you are vulnerable in my office. I trust that state that I will treat you with dignity and respect regardless of the circumstances that have bought you to my office. I trust that state that outside of a few special circumstances anything that you would say to me is private and confidential.

I now recognize the importants of the community involved with professional organizations. These organizations set values for this prestigious profession. These organizations provide for opportunities for networking and mentorship for younger profession in the field. These organizations protect the public from unethical practitioners.

I am now a proud member of the Suncoast mental health counseling Association. I am encouraging all of my colleagues to get involved at some level in professional organizations. I believe that this is the critical to do. This is a privilege that we get to do every day and we need to have standard for are profession.

I am alive:Back to blogging

Yes everyone, I am still alive and kicking. I recognize that it has been close to a year since the last time I submitted any type of blog. I have been on a hiatus of sorts from writing any type of blog publicly. At this time I have decided to return to blogging. A lot has happened over the past 12 months. I am not prepared to go into great detail on this blog entry, because this is far too complicated and complex to discuss on a single blog. However I believe it's time to return to blogging.

For those of you that are just now following my blog, this blog is about the counseling profession. This blog is also about disability issues and the self advocacy movement. I am still very much deeply in love with this profession. For someone that is 27 years of age, I can't believe all the opportunities that have been afforded to me at such of the young age. My specialty to date has been working with individuals that have experienced complex trauma issues. I've had the opportunity of to receive clinical supervision from my clinical supervisor John Mayo. He has taught me to operate from a family systems and a straights-based perspective is a way to provide treatment to the population. I focus on strengths of my clients instead of pathology. I do this with the population where it's easy to focus on pathology instead of students. However I still believe that using this of perspective it is a better way to provide treatment to clients.

The volume of my practice had definitely increased. I am beginning to see more more complex cases.I have begun to see a lot of stuff that I have only read about in textbooks. This has been both exciting and scary at the same time. I find myself going back to the fundamentals of counseling. Focused on the therapeutic relationship I have with my client. I'm learning a lot every day. I am being challenged every day. this is a very good thing.


I have had the distinct privilege of doing some consulting with self advocacy group with a team of people. This is something that I will talk about in future blogs. Consultant is only one component of my practice.

In the fall of 2014 I anticipate applying for a doctorate programs in Education. For many of you that have been following me you thought it was going to be this year. The past 12 months have been very interesting and a lot has changed in my own professional and personal life. The doctorate program you need to be placed on hold why I get some stuff organized. I feel at peace at this.

Over the next couple of blogs I will be diving into the past couple of months. I'm very excited to be returning to writing publicly again.This blog will discuss the perspective that I have about counseling and the disability rights movement in the state of Florida