The US Army has recently implemented group counseling to help those related to fallen soldiers move on in the event of a soldier’s death.
This program, known as Survivor Outreach Services, will call army survivors and ask if they wish to join a group of those who also lost relatives in the army.
Like many outreach programs, one call will not convince people to attend group so many calls are are done but in a non-aggressive way.
This program has helped hundreds of survivors make some kind of sense of their loss and move on.
Group counseling can be extremely intense and personal and can help anyone with any kind of problem. Comfort in a group and acceptance is a powerful therapeutic alliance.
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Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
The ‘Closing the Addiction Treatment Gap’ or CATG, a national program composed of at least 9 separate organizations, was founded to increase awareness of addiction and help provide more resources for addiction treatment.
It is estimated that 4 out of 5 Americans requiring addiction treatment do not receive it. The CATG organized and ran valid, well run studies to determine the effectiveness of addiction treatment, especially counseling.
They have found that people who receive addiciton treatment will use less health care money for emergency room visits, hospitalizations, etc than those receiving no treatment.
Thus addiction treatment can now be viewed as a valid way to help reduce health care expenses.
I spent 8 months as a counselor intern in what I’ll call a ‘recovery center’ for lack of a better word. It was a place where people socialize, attend AA meditation meetings and attend groups oriented toward personal growth.
This was a time when I practiced group facilitation and individual counseling but mostly it was to learn more about myself to see if I would make a good counselor. And to see if I even wanted to do it.
I did enjoy it but it was a tough time: doing an internship in addition to normal work hours is hard enough but one designed to make you face your inner self….? Extremely hard and discouraging at times. Also very rewarding.
The internship finished the beginning of May and I was invited back today to see everyone and to attend a special luncheon centered around 3 AA speakers.
As usual the group setting, the speakers and the comradeship were inspirational; I realized what I had been missing the last 2 months – security in a group.
Some notable thoughts from the meeting (paraphrased):
“You’ll never have it all so once you learn to celebrate your life and be thankful for what you do have, you will be happy.”
“You do not go through the 12 steps just once, you make them part of your life and use them every day.”
“We, alone, are responsible for taking drugs and drinking. No one is forcing us to do it.”
“Drinking is done to fill the ‘black hole’. The problem is it’s bottomless.”
“Start drinking for self medication and watch everything of value in your life slowly vanish until you have nothing.”
What would we do without a good rationalization to protect us from the truth. I know I cannot get through the day without a rationalization.
So what am I talking about? A rationalization is a Freudian defense mechanism and it merely means finding a positive reason for something we did wrong in an attempt to minimize how wrong that action was.
For example: you have been drinking and as you walk down some steps you trip. When you get up you say ’someone should fix those steps’. Or you cheat on your taxes and justify it by the fact that the government wastes money anyway so why should I give them all of my money?
As a drug and alcohol counselor you can hear some rather interesting rationalizations for relapse and continued drug use. Such rationalizations include: ‘Everyone said I wouldn’t last so went and I took the drug’ or ‘I relapsed because I got mad at my parents. That’s what made me do it’. Another: ‘So I got drunk and got arrested…it’s not like I shot someone…’.
And my all time favorite is ‘I’m just seeing if I can resist temptation’.
All these rationalizations have one thing in common; they all avoid reality by making excuses. And that is what continued, compulsive drug seeking behavior does, it forces us to make excuses to help justify the compulsion.
One of the goals of counseling, both individual and group, is to help the patient take responsibility for their behavior. Coming to terms with addiction by making it personal is a good step in overcoming it.
Consider the following 3 scenarios and tell me which one not only violates ethical boundaries but is against the law:
- I’m a counselor organizing a group trip for my counseling patients and to make it work, everyone attending has to contribute $10. Mark does not have $10 at the moment and asks if I could throw the money in for him and he will pay me next week.
- Mark cannot pay me back right away so, needing some yard chores done at home, I ask Mark if he would like to ‘work off the $10′ instead.
- After a counseling session with a patient, his wife calls and asks if we talked about an issue she urged him to bring up to me and I respond ‘Yes, we talked about it’.
Actually #1 and #2 definitely violate ethical boundaries and are illegal. #3 is conditional upon whether a previous ‘release of information’ to the patient’s wife was specifically signed by the patient.
In a helping profession such as counseling there are strict legal and ethical boundaries to adhere to in order to remain certified as a counselor. These legal and ethical boundaries protect the patient’s privacy and protect from exploitation.
And if you do not adhere to these standards your certification will be yanked away and you will not be able to practice counseling.
Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and prepare to make amends to them all.
From the Big Book (paraphrased)
Step 8 is done after facing oneself truthfully and really learning to like ourselves again. It’s an appreciation of who we are gained by handing over the burden to a higher power.
Now is the time to make amends with others…to repair all those relationships damaged or destroyed by drugs or alcohol. The best way to approach this is to break the list up into distinct categories and hit them one by one.
This way an entire history and past does not need to be tackled all at the same time – deal with it in small, manageable chunks.
The process of becoming a drug and alcohol counselor is tough, at least in Connecticut. Requirements include passing approved classes and completing an on-site internship experience in an actual counseling setting that touches upon each of the 12 core functions of the drug and alcohol counselor.
In addition you need recommendations, a completed case study on an individual in your internship and you need to pass the Connecticut Certification Board’s Drug and Alcohol Counselor Test which, apparently, many people have taken several times but failed.
You also need 6000 hours of training signed off by an LADC (Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor). The LADC is distinguished from the CADC (Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor) by virtue of having a master’s degree.
And once you become certified you pretty much need a master’s degree to find a job…
Well I don’t have a master’s degree but I’m still plugging along. What it comes down to is that to want to be a drug and alcohol counselor you need to really, really want to do it.
I was a former computer programmer consultant working in state agencies and different insurance companies and pretty much spoiled by my salary.
These days my salary is 33% of what it used to be and I’m broke but I finally have a satisfaction and contentment with what I do. I could go back to it but I never will – working in an insurance company is a pretty useless job; you do absolutely nothing for others besides maintaining the company profit. And I’ll apologize in advance for those who are now working in an insurance company that I have offended.
In another year I will probably have 4000 experience hours under my belt. Since I’ve already completed the required classes, done the internship, gotten my recommendations and taken and passed the dreaded certification test I will apply for provisional certification.
And in another year after that I’ll have a full 6000 hours of experience and I’ll finally become fully certified; recognized by several states in the USA as well as internationally.
Wish me luck…
Humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings.
(From the Big Book)
Steps 6 and 7 are taken hand in hand and dealt with day by day…the process of ‘letting go’ takes a while.
| The Seventh Step Prayer |
My Creator, I am now willing
that you should have all of me,
good and bad.
I pray that you now remove from me
every single defect of character
which stands in the way of
my usefulness to you and my fellows.
Grant me strength,
as I go out from here,
to do your bidding.
Amen. |
“We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”
All character defects have been honestly faced so now it is time to accept these character defects for what they are…
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