This post will be my first attempt at writing about what made me an effective counselor and how my mindset is ineffective in the counseling world. First it is extremely important to read the following posts with a paradoxical mindset. If you don't know what a paradoxical mindset is, then step away from this literature and set yourself on a learning path for paradoxical thinking (Hameiri et al., 2014). Much of my mind over the last several months, possibly last couple of years, has been in the cloud of doubt around our (humanity's) ability to put a dent in the disparity between the civil dysfunction and grow social harmony. So I've been wrestling with how to put that chaos into words.
How do I write without authority in a field full of passionate, good intentioned, charlatanistic, wounded, talented, experts, who function out the same legalistic, profit driven, insurance tethered, evangelistic, conservative systems that damaged the people they are wanting to rescue. This isn't going to be easy. So I am going to chip away at it. I am no longer a counselor because I was becoming a counselor.
I found my platform. I found my model of treatment. I found a diagram that will invite people to orientate versus locate themselves. I have had to step away from the great teachings of Ainsworth, Bowlby, Harlow, and Siegle. When I say step away it is in a modest non American sense of the phrase. I say it like a young child might step away from their first 2,000 piece puzzle to take those 2,000 pieces and have the curiosity to draw a new picture from that puzzles box cover image. I don't have the medical knowledge to fully understand the brain, nervous system, hormone balancing, dietetics, or pharmacology and yet I experience each of these while applying these fore parent's expertise on modern mental healing. For me it is lifestyle health more than mental health. As if I found a new way of looking at nature versus nurture; Mindset versus Lifestyle!
I don't attach....I bond. And my aptitude for building relationships with others is what I call my Bondability...it isn't a collection of patterns it is an inborn instinct, that must develop into a skill, taught through culture and environment, and exercised through lifestyle.
