Escalators quicksand and overwhelm

Feeling overwhelmed. I need a bunch more clients, which means a bunch more paperwork, and I don't know how I'm going to manage to get it all done. Next week is ok but probably still to much, the week after that is crazy, way too much, and then I have a week of vacation, which I'm worried will turn into a week of catching up on paperwork instead of actually having a vacation. And I don't know if it's ever going to have a breather, until I (hopefully, still am not getting enough hours) graduate. Feeling the stress.

Even my weekly review, to try and get a handle on things, took like 3x as long as normal, and I can't figure out why. Do I have that much more stuff going on? Am I somehow way more distractible than normal? It's like when things start to go off the rails, my flailing to get them back on the rails makes them go even further off. My classic issue of trying to organize myself so I can get more done, but the organization ends up taking up more of my time than it gives back, so it makes things even worse. Now all the other stuff I wanted to get done didn't get done, and it's 10pm. I wanted to catch-up over the weekend and instead just barely didn't get further behind. 

Things are bad, so I try and make them better, and it makes them even worse. That my friend, is very disheartening.

There's got to be some way to simplify things so I am actually keeping the worthwhile stuff, while discarding or streamlining the majority, so I have more time for the important, but when I try to do that, I fail, and somehow end up with even more stuff. As I said, quite disheartening. Feels like I'm trying to walk up some stairs but I'm on an escalator going down. Except the harder and faster I try and go, the faster the escalator goes the other direction. Maybe it's like quicksand? The more I struggle the more I get sucked down?

In any case, these are all first world problems, as they say. Ultimately, nobody's going to die or even be seriously hurt if I don't get all the things done. It will all work out one way or the other, and the worst that's likely to happen is just being stressed out for several months. Not enjoyable, but doable. I did it for years while being a teacher. Maybe I'll even figure things out and get good enough at the paperwork that it's not so ridiculously time-consuming.

Shots! Administrative Paperwork! More Peaches!

The blackberries are really coming in now! Also, massive massive numbers of peaches. It's finally reaching the end, but it must have been like 50 pounds of them. Picking and processing them during harvest time seems like a full time job.

I think I already mentioned, that I passed the test? Yes, looks like I did. And, I'm getting ready to start my group sessions, which is happening, Yay for that. And, my clinical director put the word out that there was a free intern taking patients, so I've started to get more clients very quickly. So: woohoo! Looks like all my worries are over. Except for paperwork. And the actual process of counselor development. Which is way more fun and interesting and seemingly important than paperwork. And with all the new intakes, it's going to be A LOT of paperwork. I'm sure I will eventually get fast at it, but until then, it's really a lot of time. Working on it. Also trying to work on the actual counseling, but sadly that gets second place because the paperwork HAS to get done and the development does not. Seems backwards. And I often can't resist study to improve myself and learn more about the mechanics and science and theory, when it seems useful in helping my clients improve.

Also: injections. One of my cousins who has a young child was at a bat-mitzvah with me and the dj played a song that one of the teens demanded that was probably inappropriate and part of the song was chanting "shots shots shots shots" and my cousin turned to his little daughter and said something like "he must really like going to the doctor to get shots, huh?" So now that's our theme song when we have to do the hormone injections. Adds a little lightness to something she's really not looking forward to.

Blackberries, Peaches, Star Trek

The blackberry bushes are exploding. The peach tree is giving us boxes and buckets and bowls of peaches. 50 pounds? 60? A lot. Just picking them all is a lot of work especially in the summer heat, but then they have to be processed (they can't all get eaten). It's a lot of work. Just to be clear, I'm not doing much of this work, this is Suzannah, who has a passion for peaches currently and gardening always. What a wonderful thing to be passionate about. But I'm at max capacity already, with work and school and learning how to do my job well. I'll help keep our house plants alive and the need-to-do chores done. I think I've said this before in grad school, it sounds like the star trek thing where their engines have been shot at: energy systems at critical levels, transferring all remaining energy to basic life support systems. I've already gone down in classes as much as I reasonably can. It's time to just push through now. It's only for a little bit, so I can do it, and most of the time, it's not quite this intense. It's just when several sometimes-things overlap.

It's very sweet having the nephews over though, so I say worth it.

OK, that's all for these two weeks, I out

Passing, Pouring, Progesterone-ing

 I have completed my NCMHCE, the counselor licensing exam for Iowa, and... I passed! by a bunch! Woo! Now, we've got family (Suzannah's sister's family) visiting and staying with us for a week, and I need to finish writing the curriculum for the group I'm going to lead to get my group hours. Also a bazjillion other things, so it seems and feels like. I still love the work I'm doing, but it feels like a "when it rains it pours" situation, with lots of paperwork, some of which is kind of backlogged from me focusing on studying for my test, plus the additional inputs required from visiting family, plus Suzannah starting her next round of IVF and all the additional medical stuff to keep in mind. It's a lot.

It kind of seems like me getting behind on my blogs is a good thermometer for how busy I am. I am looking forward to the possibility of being able to slow down for a bit, after I graduate. At that point, I can kind of set my own pace, to a larger degree. Until then, (December) it's a race to the end. Now that my test is done, and it looks like I'm going to get my group hours, the one remaining hurdle that still needs jumping is getting all my direct client hours. I don't have enough clients currently, and though I'm open to getting more, there just aren't many new clients for me currently. I'll figure it out, but it's not yet figured. I'm working on it well in advance though, so that gives me a lot of time to course correct.

OK, gonna end here for this post. Maybe another short one to stay current after this.

The magic of Deliberate/Purposeful practice

 Another! (I am slowly but surely catching up to my blog backlog. How about that. Nice.)

This post is about something I am very passionate about: deliberate practice, as applied to helping professions. Normally, deliberate practice is about the science of mastery, and is applied to fields like professional music or sports (both physical and mental, such as chess.) But the founder of the idea Anders Ericsson, asserts that it is relevant to any kind of mastery that anyone develops, thought it gets a bit more fuzzy (and thus is called "purposeful practice") when it is in less clearly defined and developed fields, where 'success' isn't as exactly measured, and there aren't coaches and systems of training that have been refined over years. In general though, it seems to apply pretty universally, though, interesting and important note, even taking account of deliberate practice, there are still a lot of other factors that seem to influence mastery. 

To my understanding, deliberate practice or its relative purposeful practice (I'm just going to abbreviate that to DP for short, so I don't have to keep typing it out), maybe accounts for 30% of the variance in skill levels of people (that's a gross oversimplification.) That may seem small, but the key to remember, is no other single variable they've been able to identify accounts for close to that much of the variability. It's just a general mush of "other stuff" which is not at all helpful, in gaining mastery. 

In any case, the punchline is this: most of the things we do, to try and make people better at their jobs: doctors, teachers, therapists, is useless. It doesn't actually make them better. But DP does. My first big aha about this, was going through my education masters, being boggled by the lack of scientifically rigorous and proven preparation, for us teachers. We could be making teachers so much better, if we followed what the science said about training for skill mastery. I was sad, because there was literally nothing available to me, to do that, even though I wanted to. It seemed like a gross oversight, and I wanted to do something about it, though I was woefully unqualified to head such an operation. Nowadays, DP has gotten a little more popular and talked about in the literature, though it getting operationalized practically speaking still seems to be in its infancy.

However, the field of psychotherapy, perhaps because it is more closely linked with academia, has a little bit more research minded people behind it, and thus there is actually a small but strong movement of people who are trying to operationalize the science of DP as applied to psychotherapy. This is super exciting to me, especially since the research also clearly shows that just about everything else has close to zero effect on improving therapist outcomes. There seems to be quick growth at and around the begining, where there is a lot of learning, and then stagnation for the rest of their career. This is not isolated to counselors, it's true of many professions where they don't get immediate feedback on the results of their work, like primary care providers, and usually, teachers.

So I am super excited to learn about, and start implementing, DP into my own practice, and maybe someday, help support something that gives that opportunity to teachers as well.

Good enough grades, Group work, and Getting hours

 So I've been diligently practicing for my NCMHCE test, and seem to be getting on average a bit over 70%, which should mean a pass. That is fantastic news, and I'm looking forward to that weight being off my shoulders. The next looming deadline is really just getting all my hours in. If I don't, it's not the end of the world, but it is a whole other semester I'll have to take of school, which would be a big waste of time, since I'd likely only be short by a few hours. But at my current rate, I'm not gonna make it. Though I am ramping up to have more clients per week, so that will hopefully be enough. But I need about 12 per week, which is 4 per day, to make that work currently I'm at closer to 8. Or I might go up to 4 days a week so I can do 3 per day, if 4 ends up feeling too intense. (Seeing 4 clients a day is totally fine. also doing 4 hours of paperwork, not so much.)

Not to mention, I need 10 group hours, which is the hardest thing to get so far, because there are no already-in-action groups going on. I've created and advertised for two groups already, at considerable cost to my time, designing the group, designing the posters and facebook posts. Nobody signed up. Not a one. So I'm looking into other avenues. Seeing if someone else in town is already running a group, and would be willing to let me co-facilitate, or begging my friends to attend something I make for them so I can get my hours in. 

We will see. Hopefully one of the avenues I'm pursuing will bear some fruit.

Wish me luck,

-Isaac

Wishes, Wonder, Work

 I'll do one more short one. Some celebratory news. I think it was just last week, as I was feeling deep gratitude for being able to do this work, that I noticed I felt a bit more confident in myself as a therapist. Part of one of the things that I do differently from most therapists is track the client's progress, as measured by themselves. Through that objective measure, and the people I'm working with's self report, it genuinely seems like what I'm doing is making a positive difference in people's lives. I think it took me this long, to see enough different people, and for long enough, to confirm for myself that it wasn't just a fluke. This is a wonderful feeling, and makes it a bit easier to convince myself I don't need to spend quite so long planning and taking notes, because I can see and feel what I'm doing that's working, and it's not about writing copious notes. (though I do believe thinking deeply about my clients and coming up with possible next steps and trouble-shooting are some of the the things that really help.)

It's also really satisfying, getting feedback about what's working, and what's not, and then working to change things, and seeing positive results from the changes. It feels like what I'd always wanted from my teacher training, but never been able to get.

That's something worth inventing: a system for training teachers that includes a simple, well validated way to quickly measure how students are doing after a lesson, both academically, and socially/emotionally. Did they learn it, did they enjoy it? How could it be improved? And same for classroom atmosphere/culture. My friend deliberate practice and Anders Ericsson. I wonder if that would work to improve teachers skills? I would have loved it. Though I also would have loved a clearer synthesis of what factors actually make the biggest difference in student outcomes. Though I don't care only about academic outcomes, I would want to know if school is helping them become better human beings as well. Otherwise what's the point?

OK, I'll end there for today. Hope you're enjoying the lush summer greenery out there. The fireflys are out in force these nights, and it's magic to behold.

Wishing you well, wherever you are,

Isaac