Yesterday I stayed behind class with a classmate of mine to talk to one of our professors. My classmate, Laura, was talking to her about what a hard time she was having doing substance- abuse counseling. She said that it was really difficult not to tell her clients to "just stop being stupid!" In my head I was agreeing with her, and honestly I really don't know if I would ever want to do substance-abuse counseling. My professor gave us some good advice that I thought was pretty profound.
First, she said that you can't get away from substance-abuse counseling because it affects so many different populations and is a factor in so many different mental health issues. Then she said that no one chooses to be addicted. No one chooses to lead dangerous and miserable lives. The deep down true reasons that they have for doing what they do may seem ridiculous to us, but to them in the here and now they are very real. If we take the "Dr. Phil" stance and just tell them they are wrong and need to straighten up, in their mind we will automatically be put in the category of everyone else who has told them what they already know. Until we as counselors can put aside our own mindset and viewpoint and truly understand their reality, we will be 100% ineffective. I just thought that that was great advice and I wanted to make sure that I would remember it.
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I often thought the very same thing about kids. Especially when I had 2 in diapers, two that wanted to gooooo and one that wanted to read all the time. Distruction as you pictured was not very common but one time Alex tried to make a cake using the papasan chair as the mixing bowl with eggs, flour and more. Just laugh and go on. Take more pictures of the puppies being good and be thankful that this time Anthony took pictures and didn't 'save' it for you to clean up!
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