Training, training, training

Counselling & Coaching are both professions where you are never finished with your studying. Sure you have your degree and your work but the world around us changes. New methods are found and tested and to be honest most of us are just plain curious. I definately fall into that category. Since finishing college and starting work I have always done some studying on the side. Sometimes for work and sometimes just *gasp* for fun. Right now all my studying and reading is geared towards online working. I will read about social media, networking, marketing but also about how to work effectively online. This week there is a conference in and about second life I am thinking about attending. I very much see the advantages of working in second life and making an avatar that expresses who you are inside. My only problem... second life is still one of my challenges online. I have been able to finally dress my avatar but adding hair is still beyond me. So the next few days I am going to give it one more try to teach myself new skills. And hopefully I will feel confident to attend.

Social networking and therapy

I grew up in such a different world. When I was a teenager there were no computers. [And I am not even ancient] No mp3 players, DVD players or mobile phones. We were lucky to have kids programs on one of the two tv channels on wednesday afternoon for three straight hours. 

Boy what a different world it is today. Most kids have their own computer next to their other electronic toys. And for a lot of adults teenage conversations are hard to follow. Think about text message language that is finding it's way to being used on the computer as well. For therapists it poses more problems. When you start to work online, you have to think carefully about how you want to present yourself online. What do you want clients to be able to find about you? And are you going to try to find out about clients? And what about the past? The things that are already online?

Try to google your name for example and to many people it comes as a shock what is out there. Comments you made on your favorite rockband's homepage, a comment in a digital guestbook of a museum you visited 10 years ago. Those are pretty innocent, but what about those pictures of a roudy party your friend has but on facebook because they think it was funny and they were friendly enough to tag you in it and make it public to the whole world. However carefull you are yourself with 'only friends' settings, those are things you just cannot control.

What you can control is what you put online yourself from this moment and your own policy. For me this means that I will not add clients online for my private facebook and hyves pages. And I put all my settings on friends online. It is not that I don't like my clients, but I want to keep my private life and my professional life seperate. Also I am bound by my ethical code to do so. I make this very clear on my professional website. Clients are more than welcome to follow me on my professional sites, like this blog, and my professional facebook, hyves  or twitter page.Likewise I state that I will not google my clients names or look for them on social media. These things are not law yet and maybe never will. But I think it makes life a whole lot easier and friendlier if we all stick to basics like these.