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Counselor. Teacher.. POG…: What am I supposed to be…?

By Ronald Crampton posted 02-20-2015 11:54 AM

  

It is about that time again…, to fork out several hundred dollars to renew my licenses… I took the surveys on the DORA site and admittedly I felt disheartened…

What is a Mental Health Counselor…?

A MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELOR is: a trained professional who can work with patients on a one-to-one basis: A qualified professional who is licensed to provide counselling either independently or as part of a treatment team: A person trained to give guidance [help or advice (an opinion or suggestion) that tells someone what to do] on personal, social, or psychological problems.

A MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELOR is not a TEACHER: to cause or help [someone] to learn how to do something by giving lessons, showing how it is done, etc…

Honestly it sounds like semantics to me…! But according to the profession, I need to know the difference…

I have over a hundred PDF psychology articles on my computer right now. I have a ratio of approximately three fiction to 150 psychology textbooks in my library. I go to the book store and I stand in front of the shelves that hold hundreds of psychology related books. At times (and growing more frequent) I believe I am in a world of psychology where hundreds and hundreds of people are all trying to talk at once to the point where I do not apprehend any of it: But ironically I understand what they are saying because I know they are all saying the same thing…

As a Marine a POG is someone who is not a Grunt, has not set foot in the field, but yet writes policies and procedures on how to be a Grunt. Note, when I say set foot in the field it is metaphorical for a mental foot. I had a Butter-bar who could calculate mils in his head and damn near had an eidetic memory for the Battlefield guidebook. He ordered us Machine Gunners to low crawl a machinegun approximately 100 yards up a hill (pretty much qualifies as a mountain)  to set up for enfilade fire. If we are behind a very large hill (mountain)… who the hell is going to see us that we would have to low crawl 90% of it…? POGs do not see what is in the real world, but rather they only see what is in a book…

I am an odd duck with a predominate virtue of Humanities and thus have been applying the art of psychology for the majority of my conscious life. Unfortunately for most of my conscious life I had no real idea of what I was doing, thus the psychology of humans made living a bit of a challenge. Now that I have been Educated, Degreed, Trained, Licensed, and damn near force feed the Pavlovian conditioning of psychology I have been taught textbook psychology which apparently I am not supposed to teach to clients…

What is the intent of psychology…? What is the intent of counseling…? We have maintained the same textbook script of psychology for thousands of years, and thus maintained the same human for thousands of years. And where are we…? Yes, I like my computer, but it does not transcend my human… Yes, to help other people is great, but if it is only to maintain then it does not transcend human… It makes no sense to me that I as a psychology counselor am not supposed to teach my clients how to transcend…

I now, clearly see that we are in the wrong jungle… And we have been for many years…

Let us reason something for a moment: If a client comes to a counselor, then the client DOES NOT have the answer...! The client IS the only one that can achieve the answer, but they CANNOT achieve the answer until the answer is revealed…! Counselors had to do the same process before taking the NCE and/or EPPP to transcend to counselors, but our counselors were our teachers… Now as counselors, we may want to play this Pavlovian scripted humbleness role of subliminally suggesting psychological terminologies at a layman level to the client until the self-autonomous epiphany occurs and the client proclaims the answer, but the reality is that we taught the answer just like we were taught…

But again, I am an odd duck… I have a passion of Intrigue and a love of Mastery for psychology, but I often question if I fit in this profession… What is wrong with teaching people how to transcend…?

Collaborative Topic: Are we Counselors…? Are we teachers…? Or are we POGs…?

I encourage you to reply…

Thank you,

Ronald E. Crampton, MA, LAC, LPC

AV TREATMENT SERVICES, LLC

13791 East Rice Place, Suite 104

Aurora, CO 80015

(720) 250-8432

Email: recrampton@avtreatment.com

Website: http://avtreatment.com

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