More on online education

This week I want to talk some more on my favorite topic. Education for counsellors. If you read my post regularly, you will already know how important that is to me. That is the reason I qualified myself as an online counsellor next to my f2f diploma's in counselling and coaching. For those who want to train for online counsellling this course is starting next week.

But being a counsellor means you keep learning, I think curiosity is a great trait to have for a therapist. This week I am attending a counseling conference that takes place in Second Life. [it will be on until saturday so you can  still catch some of it. This is the 3rd year the virtual conference for counsellors is being held in Second Life. [if you don't feel secure enough in Second Life onlinevents is streaming it live from their website and you can still participate in the chat!] It is an excellent oppertunity to network, learn more about what is going on in the world of online counselling, new technologies and learning a lot more about virtual worlds and their possibilities. The starting day yesterday already had some very interesting topics. Most interesting yesterday was a discussion by Kate Anthony and DeeAnna Marz Nagel with the director of an upcoming documentary login2life. This documentary focusses on the positive sides of Second Life, how virtual worlds can be a haven a support for people with dissabilities. I can't wait to see the whole documentary!

I want to mention another online conference as well. Normally I do not go for paid conferences , but for this one I am making an exeption. The practice building conference is organised by Casey Truffo. Her book " How to be a wealthy therapist" is like a bible to me. A lot of therapists have problems with charging money for what we do and this book has helped me see that I am worth it! Marketing a practice is strangely enough not a part of most therapy training programs. That is were books and conference like this one come in. You gain so much knowledge and it is also such a great oppertunity to network and get to know other therapists. This alone can lead to business oppertunities somewhere in the future.

Book review :Me and my pain

A little while ago I was looking around a website that sold cheaper e-books. A friend had given me this tip. The website is called smashwords and indeed it has lower priced and even free e-books in many categories and e-book formats. While I was filling in the keywords that interrest me, I came across the following book.
"Me and my pain - the challenges of living with chronic pain" by Abbey Strauss. As it was only 2$ and it seemed pretty interresting I decided to download it and give it a try.

I must say those were 2$ well spend. This book really focusses on one of the challenges of living with pain. And that is the challenge of making people [especially doctors] believe in our pain. With so many of us you don't see on the outside that we are almost always in pain. And medical tests can't find a reason for the pain. How often have you heard "Maybe it is more a mental problem", seen in doctor's eyes that they don't really believe you. In this book is advocated for doctors and patients to be honest to each other and to believe in one another. Pain that is not understood and not acknowledged can drive people to suicide. Patients can feel they have tried anything and nobody understands what is going on.

The sections on addiction are really strong. A lot of pain patients are wronly labeled addicts because they take a lot of painkillers to get through the day. He explains very well that this is not the case. If the pain would go away so would the painkillers. 

I found the following section of the book very striking.

These are the rules a patient must

follow:

Pain patients can’t have personality

disorders; if they do then the pain is not quite as real.

Pain patients can’t be depressed over their

stations in life; if they weren’t as depressed, then the pain would

be less.

Pain patients can’t be angry at, or want

compensation from, those who wrongly injured them; if they do then

the pain is not as quite as real, or it is amplified just so they

can get a larger money settlement.

Pain patients can’t have insomnia; the reason

they can’t sleep is because they have not learned enough

self-hypnosis or haven’t accepted their condition.

Pain patients can’t have anxiety or phobic

disorders requiring certain medications; they aren’t allowed to

have more than one curse in life needing treatment.

Pain patients can’t have different or

individual medication tolerances; if they do not fit within the

normal dosing ranges, then they are addicts or placebo

responders.

Pain patients can’t have more pain than the

doctor allows; if they do then they are manipulative.

Pain patients can’t have good moods; they

have to be miserable and complaining all the time.

Pain patients have to always be sick; they

can’t have good days and bad days.

Pain patients can’t have a good day without

everyone thinking the patient is finally learning to live with the

pain, or that the pain is at last vanishing forever.

Pain patients can’t disappoint people by

having a bad day after a good day.

Pain patients can’t look good; if they look

good, then the pain can’t be so disabling or menacing.

Pain patients can’t respond to hope when they

get good news; their demeanor cannot improve or change because to

do so lessens the believability of the pain’s intensity, constancy,

intolerance, and presence.

Pain patients can’t be skeptical; they aren’t

allowed to question new or proposed treatment decisions based on

their real prior experiences as pain patients.

Pain patient’s can’t have other people steal

their medications; being victimized, even one time, by a theft is

too quickly considered as an indicator of the patient’s

irresponsibility, even for those who are generally very

responsible patients.

Pain patients have to be average; if they are

too smart then they are too ‘pushy’.

Pain patients can’t be normal like the rest

of us; why should they find it easier to deal with pain, or even

stop smoking cigarettes, than anyone else?

Pain patients can’t believe in alternative

life styles; if they do then they cannot be as trusted, or they

might be considered as odd or eccentric. Such eclecticism can be

initially spooky and uncomfortable for many who treat these

patients.

Pain patients can’t be diagnostic oddities;

if their illness can’t be labeled, then it’s too quickly re-painted

as psychosomatic.

Pain patients can’t be picky; they aren’t

allowed to want other than second string doctors.

Pain patients can’t take up too much of the

doctor’s time; if they do then they might become too erudite,

insistent, or burdensome, and this may frighten the doctor

away.

Pain patients can’t shop, cook and clean; if

they do then they are not in that much pain—but, by the way, who

will do these chores for them?

Pain patients have to like everyone the

insurance company sends to care for them; if they don’t like

everyone, then they are obviously non-cooperative and

thankless.

Pain patients have to be meek; if they

aren’t, then they don’t genuinely treasure all the good that others

are trying to do for them.

Pain patients can’t know their history better

than their records; they aren’t supposed to be upset when wrong or

incomplete data and inaccurate conclusions are put into their

medical records.

Pain patients can’t feel the double bind: “if

I tell him the other doctors were wrong then he’ll think I’m too

much of a smart ass, but if I don’t tell him how the other doctors

were wrong, then we may start with the wrong clinical impression

of me, which is why I am here in the first place, to have a doctor

get it right....”

Pain patients have to know magic; they are

expected to take the cash won in a lawsuit, wrap it around the

painful part of their bodies, and make the pain go away. They are

the only people for whom money can buy happiness or cure pain.

Pain patients have to get better; if they

don’t, then doctors may not continue to treat them for the parts of

the problem that don’t get better.

Pain patients have to ‘learn to get used to

it’; this must be done with the same enthusiasm, gusto and

savoir-faire of someone getting used to being poor.

Pain patients can’t answer ‘how are you?’

with ‘fine’; for to say ‘fine’ is thought to mean that they are

better.

Pain patients can’t choose to sacrifice; if

they ever do something one day because of the emotional joy of

doing it despite the pain penalty payable afterwards, then they

can’t obviously be in that much pain.

Pain patients have to perfect; I guess that

means they can’t be human.

I don't think the situation here in Europe when it comes to getting the right medication is as bad as it is in the US. But still I found this very striking.

All in all I thought the book was a bit too long and there was a bit of repetition and the examples of people in trouble about getting the right medication went on and on. But in the end it was a very usefull book. It strongly advocates the rights of pain patients to be believed and to be helped! Every person has the right to the best life they can lead. For me that means pain patients have the right to medication they truly need and help from therapists to help them get the most out of life under difficult circumstances.

Online Conference Part II

Today I am going to continue my report on the Insight, Impacts and Innovation Conference hosted by Simpson house and streamed live by onlinevents.


The afternoon started with a short presentation stressing the importance of training. But most of the afternoon would be taken up with workshops. There were 3 workshops at the same time and the delegates in the room could chose which to attend. For the online delegates it was the workshop that takes place in the main conference room. It takes a long time to set up the camera's and the rest of the equipment but this was a good deal, the workhops I saw were interesting.


Workshop 1 was all about understanding addiction. Thanks to John Wilson from Onlinevents who typed the questions into the chatroom we could fully participate. And soon we were listing what we depended on: chocolate, nature, music etc. A very confronting question was, would you give up what you depend on if it became illegal tomorrow? I think almost everybody said or typed no! Everybody depends on something to get them through hard days. Not all these dependencies are harmful. But I must say that this workshop did help me to look at dependencies and addiction in another light and created more understanding for 'addicts'. Lots of food for thought, this one.


The second workshop was about a local Edinburgh innitiative: Make it happen. [see screenshot] This project works with young people who are at risk of offending. The recent riots in Britain clearly show the need for such programs and the fact that more funding is needed, not less! 

The important facts that I took away from this workshop are:

• Almost all the coverage about young people at the moment is negative
• It is important for young people to have role models and attainable goals
• Respect goes both ways! Older people demand respect from young people, but that respect should be earned.

After this the day drew a close and I turned my computer off feeling very satisfied and stuffed with new information.

Online conference Part I

In my profession you are not finished learning when you receive your diploma. I would even state that the day you have your diploma in your hands is the day that your learning really start. Every day you learn about life from your clients. And you owe it to them to stay up to date about what is going on in the world and in the field of counselling and coaching.

Yesterday I had such an oppertunity. The good part, I did not even have to leave my house to do so. Thanks to onlinevents I was able to watch a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland online. It was called Insight, Impacts and Innovation Conference. It was organised by Simpson house an organisation based in Edinburgh. And the topics of the day was mostly working: with children with addicted parents, working with at risk children and working in a prison setting.


I have attended online conferences through onlinevents before and it is always excellent quality. On their webpage you can watch the conference and even better there is a chatscreen that let's you chat with othe online attendee's. The great team keep an eye on the chat room and will pose your questions to the lecturers in the venue. It is really worth giving it a try.


I will make a start with giving you my impressions of the conference, which I will continue next week.


The morning part started with a talk on the importance of attachment. It is something we all remember from our training and yet we don't use it enough. When children and young people show agressive behaviour it is so important to understand were they are coming from, where the anxiety come from. Did they ever have a secure base at home? Do they feel secure and safe now? Giving them that feeling of safety is a basis to really start work. She also stressed the need for art and music therapy, areas that suffer so heavily from the recent government cutbacks.


The next brief talk was on outcomes of a study on if counselling is succesfull for addicted people. The outcomes were amazing. Almost all of those in the trial had not believed counselling would help at the outset, and most had changed their mind and found it very useful in the end. What was mostly mentioned was that it helped them feel less isolated and helped them relearn social skills. it also gave them more insight on why they used drugs.


The next pat consisted of 3 short case studies and a talk about working in the prison system. This section could have been a bit longer. The ten minutes talks were too short to really do the speakers justice I thought. But still it was very impressive. Especially the case study of "Jake" a prisoner. It showed him as a person with feelings and fears and not an outcast in a prison.

The last part of the morning was a talk by Kate Anthony on social media & technology. As always this was very informative and offered a lot of information for those who are not used to working online. She is always an advocate on working ethically online and stressing the importance of training when working online. [Training online is offered for example by the online therapy instute and online training for counsellors.]



I will cover the afternoon part of the day next week.




Some websites for you to look at:
http://www.simpson-house.org/sunflowergarden.htm
http://www.mihedinburgh.org/welcome.htm 
http://www.simpson-house.org/home.htm
http://www.onlinevents.co.uk/
http://www.onlinetherapyinstitute.com/
http://www.onlinetrainingforcounsellors.co.uk/

 

Can gaming be a positive thing? Part 2

 

It’s been a while since I blogged about online gaming. I promised to get back to it after I had asked some of my own online friends who game what gaming meant to them. And how it had helped them in a positive way during their lives. In a time when gaming has again been shown in a negative light due to the shootings in Norway, I would like to stress the positive sides.

Two of my friends got back to me [both want to stay anonymous]. But they did not mind if I shared what they had to say with you. So here are a few of their responses.

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Did gaming ever help you through a bad period?

Luckily, I haven't had that many really big bad times in my life. I

guess I'm still young, and perhaps haven't experienced that much. But,

I will say that gaming helps with stress, such as the stress of

school, and classes, etc.

If I weren't able to retreat into the world of games, the pressures

of being a grad student might have driven me to do other things a lot

of people my age and in my position end up doing.

You know - drugs, drinking, and that sort of thing.

Here's an example - I'm doing homework on my comp, rendering sketches

for a grade. And it takes 3 hours for the render to complete, so I do

something else in that time. And it is usually game oriented. And it helps the time slide by really smooth.

So, I think gaming is like any other hobby. It makes slow, dull,

boring, or stressful work-shiz slide by.

Has gaming made you more or less social?

I think I'm not as reserved, or

quiet as I was in high school thanks to role-playing. I still qualify

for what a lot of people call "emo". The quiet, contemplative, and

often very opinionated side of Goth culture. But, when you really

throw yourself into the role of a loud-mouthed Klingon, you begin to

learn your own range and limitations when it comes to things like

assertiveness. I think I'm more assertive than I was before I was a

gamer.

Having said all of that, all the gamers I've ever met have been happy,

well-grounded, well-adjusted individuals. And it is the non-gamers;

the jocks, and "cool kids" who put down, tease, harass, and wedgie

gamers that are usually the social misfits, miscreants, and

ner-do-wells.

Have I made friends, through gaming that I can turn to and rely on in RL ?


I think I've met more people and made more friends in SIMing, because it is on line and anyone from anywhere in the world can participate together. You're from the Netherlands, M lives in Belgium now, K is in Australia, R is in the US.

But the friends I've made in on-line gaming are, by and large, people I trust and people I'm comfortable talking to and confiding in.

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I hope that these few replies helped to show people that most gamers are very normal balanced people. 

If you want to share your story feel free to do so through comments.