tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15180711988314534942024-02-07T05:20:53.551-08:00ReClaiming NowEmpowering Now by Promoting "Present Moment" LivingMumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.comBlogger167125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-40669036952667742602013-03-31T11:16:00.000-07:002013-03-31T12:20:33.935-07:00Consultation and Advocacy: An Integrated Approach for Aging Care Management<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consultation
and Advocacy: An Integrated Approach for Aging Care Management</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Survey
of Research in Human Development for Professional Counselors</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Abstract</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
paper presents a discussion supporting the integration of both Consultation and
Advocacy approaches to counseling in service delivery paradigms for members of the
aging population. A hypothetical Care Management case is used to show how the
two distinct approaches are complimentary, and how using an integrative
approach is empowering to the individual, and contains within it the potential
for maximizing their wellbeing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Consulting
and Social Justice Advocacy are two distinct, yet crucial aspects of the Mental
Health profession, each vying for recognition as a significant component of its
gestalt. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In its totality, the profession
purports to function primarily as a service provider with the goal of
mitigating the resolution of difficulties encountered in the lives of
individuals, organizations and other systems. Yet how these two distinct facets,
consultation and advocacy, go about the business of completing their work is a
subject of continuous scrutiny by researchers in the field of mental health
counseling. Perusing the literature in both domains, one easily recognizes that
discussions about them speak more about their distinctions than their
similarities, further reinforcing their dispersion. The dilemma facing these
strange bedfellows is not easily apparent and perhaps therein lays a challenge
for mental health counseling researchers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ongoing discourse highlighting the qualities unique to each brand of
service delivery may assist in furthering a deeper understanding of them as
more alike than dissimilar, thus articulating more succinctly their role and
function within the context of professional practices, as complimentary rather
than disparate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kurpius
and Fuqua (1993) wrote that the term consultation includes a wide range of
services that can vary substantially (p. 599), and drawing from Lippitt and
Lippitt (1978), they list a variety of “consultant modes of intervention” which
typify the range of consulting services ascribed to providers of mental health
services. Their list describes the decidedly passive role of the consultant as
“expert”, “problem solver”, “linker”, “process counselor”, “trainer”, and
“objective observer”. In their article ‘Fundamental Issues in Defining
Consultation’, the writers also quote from a number of other sources that have
identified commonly perceived modes of interventive practices. These include Schein
(1969, 1978, 1991) who uses the terms “purchase of expertise”,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“doctor-patient”, and “process consultant”,
and Caplan & Caplan (1993) who characterize the consultant as a “mental
health expert”, “client centered case consultant”, “consultee centered case consultant”,
“program centered administrative consultant”, and “consultee centered
administrative consultant”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moe,
Perera-Ditz, Sepulveda, (2010) present a concise definition of consultation in
the article titled ‘Are Consultation and Social Justice Advocacy Similar?:
Exploring the Perceptions of Professional Counselors and Counseling Students’.
In this article (referencing Brown, Pryzwansky, & Schulte, 2010, Kampwirth,
2006, Kurpius & Fulqua, 1993), the authors identify consultation as an
activity that “typically involves acting on behalf of an identified client
through interaction with another professional consultee or other stakeholder in
the client’s welfare”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>These
descriptions serve to characterize the consultant/client relationship as being
predominantly vertical in hierarchical structure, and evidentiate how power in
this relationship is transmitted in a top-down fashion. The client, possessing
a lesser degree of knowledge about a critical situation, reaches out for
assistance from the consultant, who is better equipped with the skills set
required to adequately address the problem. When encountering their personal
limitations, the consultant does likewise, and turns to assistance from one possessing
an even greater degree of perspective in order to ameliorate the problem. The
consulting relationship is summarized in two outstanding features: (a) the
client actively seeks out the assistance, and (b) the client is given theoretically
based advice regarding how to address the problem (largely ignoring the context
in which they occur). In other words, within the consulting model, the client
comes to the counselor, problems in tow, mainly seeking guidance and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">internal relief </i>from the pressures and
difficulties of a particular situation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps Ivey & Collins see definite
limitations in this style of counseling. In their article ‘Social Justice: a
Long Term Challenge’ (2003), they address the point that it is virtually
impossible to solve some individual problems if the context in which they occur
does not change. Moe et al., (2010), referencing Prilletensky &
Prilletensky, (2003), and Constantine, et al., (2007), state that those using
the social justice framework are more prone to synthesizing concepts from the
social justice paradigm with those of other key counseling perspectives such as
multicultural theory (p. 107). Multicultural theory as defined by Ivey &
Collins (2003) is “an integrated theory contextualizing the field” (p. 293). The
authors compare traditional counseling approaches with those of the multicultural
approach, describing the traditional methods as focused primarily on the
discovery of the role of the past in the present, with application of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>behavior change treatments to facilitate
adaptation to changing conditions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Multicultural
theory, on the other hand, places greater emphasis on “the importance of
expanding personal, family, group and organizational consciousness of the place
of self–in-relation, family-in-relation, and organization-in-relation” (p.
293), supporting the need for counselors to incorporate the use of systems
approach with the consulting approach for identifying barriers that restrain
the client from reaching their full potential. With respect to the aging
population, social justice theory would suggest that any oppressive system that
treats minority populations as second class (i.e., less deserving of equal
access to resources) is considered a barrier. Incorporation of the
multicultural perspective in counseling practice with aging populations equalizes
the power differential, and reduces the impact of such discriminatory practices
that endow certain individuals with privilege, and rule others out as unworthy.
Integration of the consultation approach and the advocacy approach promotes
best practices by providing a solution that both relieves personal problems <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and </i>resolves the contextual barriers
facing the client. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
integrated approach is emerging as the preeminent approach for service delivery,
and in my role as a geriatric care manager this approach is quite useful as the
premiere method of helping. This “shift in the counseling paradigm” (Ratts,
2008) is most evident in the manner in which “clients” are identified. For
instance, in our work as service providers we are encouraged to use terminology
that is solution-focused and strength-based, and so we refer to our “clients”
as “Participants”. Using this terminology reframes the nature of the
relationship, and characterizes the client less as an individual who is a recipient
of services, and more so as one who is an equal contributor in the helping
process. Participants meet the consultant in the middle, according to their
strengths and present level of ability. When a resource is needed as a channel
for meeting service demands, instead of the consultant calling the resource on
behalf of the Participant, the Participant instead is given the contact
information and encouraged to do the footwork. If an application for housing
services needs filled out, the consultant offers their assistance in filling it
out, but the Participant is encouraged to rely primarily on their own ability,
and the help of informal supports (family, friends) to complete the task. The
role of mental health training in this event is important for cultivating
self-reliance in the individual where lacking, thus empowering them to advocate
on their on behalf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collaborative empowerment
in service delivery helps individuals remain active in their communities,
rather than warehousing them out to nursing homes and long-term living
facilities. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
theory behind this approach has been discussed at great length in the article
titled: A Framework for Understanding the Consultation Process: Stage by Stage
(Buysse & Wesley, 2004), wherein the authors identify consultation as an
eight stage process. An integrated lens may be used to support its significance
as a valid approach to service delivery in the field of geriatric care
management. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consultation
lens</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Social
Justice lens</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Integrated
lens</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1. Gaining Entry</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Individual is the problem, strives to change the
individual in the situation</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Individual has a problem, strives to change the situation</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Problems are inside and outside the individual</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2. Forming relationship</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Establish parameters of relationship, ground rules for
participation</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Frame relationship as both a process and a goal (Adams,
Bell & Griffin, 2007. Pg. 3) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Combine both approaches and moves against the status quo
(Adams, Bell & Griffin, 2007. Pg 3)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3. Gathering Information</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Identify individuals’ contribution to problem</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Identify external stifling factors contributing to the
problem (activist mentality) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Explore and identify internal and external contributing factors
as barriers to problem resolution</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4. Setting the Goal</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consultant writes goals for the client</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Advocate creates strategies for client to use</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Designs strategies with the client, based on their unique abilities,
strengths and capacities</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5. Selecting a Strategy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consultant advises client on “what to do”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Advocate identifies environmental issues for the client</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Counselor discusses options with client and encourages
them to chose the problem they’d first like to address</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">6. Implementing the Plan</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consultant remains objective, and available for further
advice </span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 142.2pt;" valign="top" width="142"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Advocate works closely with client, providing “hand-on”
assistance as active change agent</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 119.7pt;" valign="top" width="120"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Counselor maintains appropriate distance, Supports and
encourages client (with informal supports) to be the change agent</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 81.9pt;" valign="top" width="82"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">7. Evaluating the Plan</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.0pt;" valign="top" width="135"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Monitors progress in planned follow-up sessions, discusses
issues in retrospect</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 142.2pt;" valign="top" width="142"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Assists client in understanding the context of the
oppressive environment, and empowers them with self-advocacy skills, so they
may become more self-sufficient (Ratts, 2008)</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 119.7pt;" valign="top" width="120"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Continually monitors the progress, and reassess the plan
as needed; cultivates the ability to be flexible (Ratts, 2008. Pg. 6)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 8; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 81.9pt;" valign="top" width="82"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">8. Holding a Summary Conference</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.0pt;" valign="top" width="135"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Summarizes the outcomes and identifies successes and
failures</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 142.2pt;" valign="top" width="142"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Prepares client to effectively manage similar problems in
the future (Brack, Jones, Smith, White & Brack, 1993. Pg. 620)</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 119.7pt;" valign="top" width="120"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Paves the way for on-going collaborative interventions.
Plans series of follow-up meetings to monitor progress</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
following example shows how an integrated approach would best meet the needs of
an aging client participating in a service delivery paradigm that serves
individuals by helping them to remain independent in their homes, as opposed to
being warehoused in short or long term nursing facilities. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this example, the consultant would be the
Care Manager, and the client would be known as the Participant. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Participant
Profile</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">John D. is a recent
referral to the County Area Agency on Aging. Referral was made by the
Social Worker at the local General Hospital. This Participant is a 78
year old male who lives alone in remote home location with no informal
supports. The Participant ambulates with a cane. He has been diagnosed with
Depression, Hypertension, Glaucoma and GERD, and takes physician prescribed
medication treatments including Wellbutrin, Amlodepine, and Prilosec. He had
recently been admitted after sustaining a head injury due to a fall that
occurred while transferring from the shower. The Participant reported that the
fall was due to sudden onset of dizziness. The Participant sustained a
concussion, took public transit to the hospital and was admitted, remaining
under observation for three days, and was discharged to his home. He has no
permanent impacts as a result of the injury, however, the Participant did
exhibit signs of bladder incontinence. He is alert and oriented to person,
place and time. The Participant seemed under normal weight for his height and
frame. His monthly income amount totals approximately $927 Social Security, and
a pension of $343. His hospitalization insurance is through Advantra. Care
Management services recommended for this Participant are as follows: PERS (Life
Alert), Adult Briefs, Senior Companion Program, Interfaith Volunteer Caregiver
Program, and Safety for Seniors Program. It is also recommended the Participant
begin Meals on Wheels Services. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consultation
Process</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage 1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gaining Entry: A telephone call to the
Participant is made to schedule the meeting for the initial Level of Care
Assessment, and the Care Management Instrument assessment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage 2. Forming relationship: Care
Manager begins to build rapport and trust in the onset of the relationship with
the initial phone call. Counselor identifies the Particpant’s unique
characteristics, strengths, risks and resiliencies, and begins to consider how
these will factor into intervention strategies later in the process. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage 3. Gathering Information: Care
Manager asks closed ended questions when harvesting for specific information.
Open-ended questions are used to help facilitate the Participant’s elaboration
on the details of an inquiry. For instance, the Care Manager may ask the
Participant to describe a typical day in his life, or to outline the patterns
of the week, in order to gain a perspective of the individual range of
activity, and to discern in depth his level of independence with activities of
daily living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage 4. Setting the Goal: During the assessment,
the Counselor identifies risk and protective factors in the Participant’s life.
Formal and Informal supports are identified, and the counselor engages these as
resources that would be of use to the Participant when designing interventive
strategies for meeting his service needs. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage 5. Selecting a Strategy: Participant
identifies his main desire as being a wish to remain in his own home. Counselor
selects appropriate resources and collaborates with the Participant in
enlisting their assistance for meeting that goal. To address the Participant’s
incontinence needs, the counselor presents three separate options for service
providers, describes the pros and cons in their particular range of services,
and gives Participant choice to identify and select his preferred provider. To
address depression, Counselor arranges with the Senior Companion Program to
match a volunteer friendly visitor according to the Participant’s preferences
(male, female, time of day for visit, day of week etc.). The Participant is
given the volunteer’s contact info, and is encouraged to make the outreach
contact himself. Likewise, using the Interfaith Volunteer Caregiver Program, a
local volunteer would be linked with the Participant by providing
transportation to the grocery store. The Counselor would also help the
Participant enroll in the local ACCESS elder transportation system, which the
Participant would use for trips to doctor’s appointments. To meet the
Participant’s social needs, the counselor would identify the local area Senior
Center, and encourage the Participant to participate in its program offerings.
Coordinating these services on behalf of, as well as in tandem with the
Participant, will help to reduce the barriers that keep him isolated from the
community, and enable him to more fully engage his spectrum of capacities, simultaneously
promoting an improved quality of life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage 6. Implementing the Plan: The
Counselor and the Participant make the contacts with service providers and
organizations and activate the solutions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage 7. Evaluating the Plan:
Monitoring occurs through telephone calls at the two-week point, and then
monthly thereafter. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stage 8. Holding a Summary Conference: A
home visit is scheduled at the six-month point, and then a complete
reassessment is completed annually.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Summary</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
faced with a critical situation, clients require the assistance of someone who
understands how the system can stand to interfere with those needs being met.
Service delivery systems are quite complex, and individuals often require the
skills of an informed expert to address and help resolve their problems. This
is why it is of the utmost importance that the counselor of today be equipped
with the education, skills and abilities to deal with the issues that are
endemic to the individual, as well as those that are specific to the
institutional systems they must interact with, in order to have their service
needs met effectively, thereby ensuring continuation of their highest level of
function. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">
</span></b></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">References</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bindman, A. J. (1959). Mental health
consultation: Theory and practice. Journal of Consulting <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Psychology, 23(6), 473-482. doi:
10.1037/h0046255</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Brack, G., Jones, E. S., Smith, R. M.,
White, J., & Brack, C. J. (1993). A primer on consultation <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>theory: Building a flexible worldview. Journal
of Counseling & Development, 71(6), <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>619-628.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Buyusse, V. & Wesley, P (2004). A
Framework for understanding the consultation process: <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Stage-by-stage. Young Exceptional Children January 2004 vol.
7 no. 2 2-9</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dickinson, D. J., & Bradshaw, S. P.
(1992). Multiplying effectiveness: Combining consultation <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>with counseling. School Counselor, 40(2),
118. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kurpius, D. J., & Fuqua, D. R.
(1993). Fundamental issues in defining consultation. Journal of <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Counseling and Development : JCD, 71(6),
598.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moe, Jeffry, Perera, Dilani &
Sepulveda, Victoria (2010). Are consultation and social justice <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>advocacy similar? Exploring the
perceptions of counselors and counseling students. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Journal of Social
Action in Counseling & Psychology</span>, <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">3</span>, 106-123</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nash, R. J. (2010). “What is the best
way to be a social justice advocate?”: Communication <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>strategies for effective social justice advocacy. About
Campus, 15(2), 11-19. doi: <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>10.1002/abc.20017</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ratts, M. J. (2008). A pragmatic view
of social justice advocacy: Infusing microlevel social <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>justice advocacy strategies into counseling practices.
Counseling and Human <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Development,
41(1), 1-8. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Shim, E. (2008). Pastoral counseling of
older adults: Toward a short-term integrative approach. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pastoral Psychology, 56(3), 355-370</span></div>
Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-4942557297275913052013-03-19T14:56:00.002-07:002013-03-19T14:56:28.150-07:00In this discussion post we are asked to
identify a challenge and a hope from Tang's article, and describe how it
resonates personally.<br /><br />The challenge that I find personally
relevant is that which charges those exercising the role of vocational counselor
to develop practice standards that satisfy professional expectations
with regard to the area of diversity. Tang (2003) identifies one of the
major issues facing emerging vocational counseling professionals as
being a “lack of ecological consideration” (pg. 63) when applying its
theoretical methods. This means they tend to neglect what social work
has identified as the person-in-environment (PIE) perspective, which
recognizes “contextual factors’ influence” on a person’s career
development. Elements such as socio-economic background, gender,
education, and even genetic propensity, combine as relevant factors in
determining the individual’s ability to adapt to the demands of an
ever-changing environment. Tang opines that integration of contextual
factors into career intervention strategy has yet to be developed. <br /><br />The
hope identified is related to the idea that no matter how daunting the
task, counseling professionals seem to possess both an innate fortitude
and an unwavering capacity for adjusting to stumbling blocks that
threaten to impede their work as they strive to advocate for change on
behalf of individuals and communities. Tang (2003) states on one hand,
“the lack of cohesiveness between practitioners and researchers presents
a problem for the validity of both theory and practice” in vocational
development, yet on the other hand, he celebrates its capacity for
“impressive growth in its ability to advance theoretical concepts” (pg.
63), in spite of the disconnect between theory and practice. <br /><br />Change
is fundamental (Kelly, 1999), and as far as such is the case, mental
health counselors are charged to face the challenges of adapting to the
constant flux and flow of changes within the environment. In the article
Postmodernism, constructivism, and multiculturalism: three forces
reshaping and expanding our thoughts about counseling (2000, pg 5),
author D’Andrea states “ethnocentric constructions of mental health and
illness continue to dominate the counseling profession”. With regard to
the relevance of the challenges and hopes to my own specific area of
focus, it appears incumbent upon me as a general mental health counselor
to develop strategies for connecting theory to practice by designing
interventions that are culturally specific, yet pertinent to the needs
of a variety of emerging population clusters. <br /><br />One hundred years
ago, population in the United States consisted mainly of homogeneous
groups of individuals who were identified as belonging to a particular
ethnic or racial heritage. Mental health for them was strongly related
to how well they managed identity conflicts that sprang from dilemmas
placing them at odds with fidelity to the values of their group. One’s
ethnic ideals superseded the larger national sense of identity, and
loyalty to the ethnic group was highly prized. Members of racial and
ethnic groups were discouraged from intermingling. People married within
their own religious denominations and ethic subgroups, and in this
manner their values were contained and advanced generationally. <br /><br />One
hundred years later genetic loyalty became watered down through the
process of urbanization, forcing subgroups to intermingle in the schools
and in the workplace. As a result people developed larger community
identities and the smaller differences mattered less. This process of
cultural decolonization brought people together, enabling them to
intermingle in ways that produced a new cultural synthesis. <br /><br />Nowadays,
we tend less to identify through ethnicity and racial differences, and
look to similarities in shared interests as a basis of commonality in
the communities we create with others. We have become a highly diverse
group of people no longer separated primarily by cultural values, but
rather we construct ourselves according to values and interests of those
with whom we identify, and with whom we share interests. If culture is a
‘work in progress’, a moving target, a construct less embedded in a
sense of identity related to a specific cultural genesis, then it is
important as a mental health counselor in training to remain vigilant to
the impact of cultural diversification, and be ever mindful of its
power to shape the world and the mental health counseling profession. <br /><br /><br />References<br /><br />D'Andrea,
M. (2000). Postmodernism, constructivism, and multiculturalism: Three
forces reshaping and expanding our thoughts about counseling. Journal of
Mental Health Counseling, 22(1), 1-16. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/198699817?accountid=27965
<br /><br />Kelly, K. R. (1999). Coda: A contextual perspective on the
future of mental health counseling. Journal of Mental Health Counseling,
21(3), 302-307. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/198780120?accountid=27965
<br /><br />Tang, M. (2003). Career counseling in the future: Constructing,
collaborating, advocating. The Career Development Quarterly, 52(1),
61-69. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/219388419?accountid=27965
<br />
Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-55031805561685757062013-03-19T14:54:00.001-07:002013-03-19T14:54:38.284-07:00Career Counseling and TechnologyCareer Counselor and Technology <br /><br />Themes of human development have
long been the focus of research efforts to study patterns of adaptive
change in environments, particularly within the age range involving
early adolescent years. Eccles, Midgley, Wigfield. Buchanan, Reuman,
Flanagan and Iver (1993), in a study titled The Impact of
Stage-Environment Fit on Young Adolescents’ Experiences in Schools and
in Families, identify some of the unique challenges facing this
population cohort. Their inquiry explores the transitory nature of the
adolescent period, and determines that the greatest risks they face are
those accompanying changes at both personal and environmental/social
levels (pg. 90). The changes at the personal level are those related to
biological and hormonal changes at puberty, changes in cognitive
development, and sexual identity formation. Changes in
environmental/social level are those related to “social role
definitions”. <br /><br />The ‘social role definition’ aspect has become a
favored topic of investigation by researchers in the field of vocational
behavior. One such researcher explores career development as related to
self-construction during adolescence, and writes about it through the
evolving ‘theory of career construction’ lens. In their article titled
Career development in the context of self-construction during
adolescence (2010), authors Unsinger and Smith identify the five
overarching life stages outlined by D. E. Super (1963) as being growth,
exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline. These are
particularly relevant to adolescents transitioning through the secondary
school education gauntlet, because ultimately these stages bear strong
influence on their ‘self-in-the-larger-world’ (pg. 580). Stage theory
generally informs us that in order to pass from one period of
development, one must master the tasks of its precedent. This being the
case, these five phases unavoidably must be traversed to completion in
order to satisfy the mastery goals of subsequent phases, though not
necessarily in linear fashion. A more recent model proposed by Savickas
(2005), the life-space career development theory, advances Super’s
theory, arguing that careers do not unfold, but rather they are
constructed. The theory asserts that “vocational behavior emerges as an
individual actively engages in making meaning of his or her experiences,
as opposed to discovering pre-existing facts” (np). <br /><br />Herein lies
the challenge facing the school counseling/career counseling
professional: to help individuals effectively and efficiently navigate
through, negotiate, and satisfy the demands of vocational developmental
tasks. For even though these are not necessarily linear, they are
progressive, and thus it is incumbent upon the vocational counselor to
properly identify the deficiencies within the individual in terms of
those areas which have not been adequately addressed in sequence, and to
work with that individual in an attempt to spackle the task
accomplishment gaps, so the individual may move unencumbered toward
reconciliation of challenges in subsequent phases. In doing so, they
accomplish what Super (1963) further identifies as the five vocation
developmental tasks: (a) crystallizing, (b) specifying, (c) implementing
a vocational preference, and subsequently (d) stabilizing, and (e)
consolidating in a vocation (pg. 580). For the vocational counselor
working with the adolescent population in secondary educational
settings, the challenge to help them rise to meet these benchmarks may
seem daunting, but the professional who is passionate about the work,
may find the prospective rewards inherent in the challenge energizing
and inspiring. <br /><br />Examples modeling innovative use of vocational
creativity abound and are apparent in two articles “Texting paid off”
(Meinhardt, 2011) and “High tech = High touch” (Turner, 2009). These
two articles describe the manner in which technology may influence
results. The solutions envisioned in these two examples, one a high
school principal who enlisted the services of a social media design
strategist, and one a high school counselor, display the effective use
of innovative technology. Both identify its potential for satisfying the
five developmental tasks identified by Super (1963), pointing out in
summary how cell phones and other forms of technology and social media
can be an “effective tool to help students stay engaged with the school
and the true mission …. education” (Super, D. E., 1963). For example,
using cell phones to connect groups with text prompting motivates them
to be on time for class, helps them to be ‘at the ready’ for entry into
the ‘ante realm’ of vocational development, where, primed for entry
through its portal, they are thus better disposed to meet developmental
challenges. <br /><br />Web Based Pilot Study Proposal<br /><br />A possible
web-based platform environment utilizing interactive activities that
support theory-based practices proposed by Super and Savickas is
indicated in the following suggested pilot study proposal. The proposal
involves a Web based virtual campus design strategy linking educational
and vocational goals. The featured cohort includes two groups. The
first group is an experimental group containing select adolescents 14
years of age who have not completed ninth grade who are incarcerated in
residential group home housing. The second group, a control group,
features individuals of the same age and grade level, who are honors
students, and who have not completed ninth grade level. The curriculum
would span a period of one year, following a quarterly schedule.
Students would be equipped with wireless capacitated 4G cell phones
(equipped with hotspots), and personal computers. Coursework would be
monitored by instructors and completed from home during the hours of
10am through 4pm each day, Monday through Friday. Students would learn
from each other by collaborating and interacting through chat room
discussion, completion of discussion board posting. The honors level
students would be excused from participation in regular classes,
however, they would check in daily with their homeroom class so as to
remain socially supported within the context of normative peer
environments. This is strictly the germ of an idea, which more fully
extrapolated would extend far beyond the range of this discussion board
posting. <br /><br />References<br /><br />Eccles, J. S., Midgley, C., Wigfield,
A., Buchanan, C. M., Reuman, D., Flanagan, C., & Mac Iver, D.
(1993). Development during adolescence: The impact of stage-environment
fit on young adolescents' experiences in schools and in families.
American Psychologist, 48(2), 90-101. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.48.2.90<br /> <br />Meinhardt, K. (2010) Texting paid off. Retrieved March 15, 2013 from http://edsome.com/2010/06/texting-paid-off/<br /><br />Paisley,
P. O., & Borders, L. D. (1995). School counseling: An evolving
specialty. Journal of Counseling and Development : JCD, 74(2), 150.
Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/219008799?accountid=27965
<br /><br />Pope, M. (2000). A brief history of career counseling in the
united states. The Career Development Quarterly, 48(3), 194-211.
Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/219386837?accountid=27965
<br /><br />Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career
construction. In S.D. Brown, R.W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and
counseling: Putting theory and research to work, Hoboken, NJ, Wiley
& Sons (2005), pp. 42–70<br /><br />Super, D. E. (1963) Vocational
development in adolescence and early adulthood: Tasks and behaviors. In
D.E. Super (Ed.), Career development: Self-concept theory, College
Entrance Board, New York (1963), pp. 17–32<br /><br />Smith, H. B., &
Robinson, G. P. (1995). Mental health counseling: Past, present, and
future. Journal of Counseling & Development, 74(2), 158-162.
Retrieved from
http://ezproxy.library.capella.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=9512046698&site=ehost-live&scope=site
<br /><br />Tang, M. (2003). Career counseling in the future: Constructing,
collaborating, advocating. The Career Development Quarterly, 52(1),
61-69. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/219388419?accountid=27965
<br /><br />Turner, T. (2009) High tech = high touch. Retrieved March 15,
2013 from
http://www.ascaschoolcounselor.org/article_content.asp?article=1105<br /><br />Usinger,
J., & Smith, M. (2010). Career development in the context of
self-construction during adolescence. Journal of Vocational Behavior,
76(3), 580-591. doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2010.01.010 Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-48350711200047509222013-03-19T14:53:00.002-07:002013-03-19T14:53:37.772-07:00History of the Counseling ProfessionHistory of Counseling<br /><br />While it would be conjecture to state which
events in the history of the counseling profession had the greatest
impact on its development, two major events within the timeline stand
out for this learner as milestones in the development of the counseling
profession. These are the Mental Health Reforms of the early 20th
Century, and the Community Mental Health Centers Act. These two
developments are important because of their contributions to the shaping
of the profession’s philosophical values, which include wellness,
resiliency, empowerment, advocacy, development and prevention. (Healy
& Hayes, 2011)<br /><br />The relevance of the Mental Health Reforms
owes to the efforts of Clifford Beers's A Mind That Found Itself (1908),
written from the author’s personal experience on the deplorable
conditions in mental health institutions. It is regarded by many in the
profession as a seminal work on prevention in the United States (Bloom,
1984; Long, 1989). Clifford Beers was a Yale student who had been
hospitalized several times throughout his life for mental illness, and
as a result of his experience, he advocated for better mental health
facilities and reform in the treatment of the mentally ill. His work is
largely considered to be “the impetus for the mental health movement in
the United States”, one of the major milestones in the development of
the counseling profession (Gladding, 1996).<br /><br />The Mental Health
Study Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1955, leading to a 5-year
study of the human and economic problems of mental illness. It concluded
with the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health Report of 1960.
The Commission ultimately recommended that despite the importance of
prevention, emphasis was needed on early, community-based treatment
(Keist & White, 1997, p. 3). <br /><br />These events in the timeline
helped turn the tide in human social services from the traditional
application of the medical model perspective, which is clinically
focused on the individual as source of the problem, to a focus on
education, solution-focused and preventative methods for dealing with
mental health issues. <br /><br />The following professional associations were explored in depth:<br /><br />The
National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC®), is an independent
not-for-profit credentialing body incorporated in 1982 to establish and
monitor a national certification system, to identify those counselors
who have voluntarily sought and obtained certification, and to maintain a
register of those counselors. Currently, its membership includes over
36,000 certified counselors. (from the website: http://www.nbcc.org/)<br /> <br />The
American Counseling Association (ACA) founded in 1952, is a
not-for-profit, professional and educational organization that is
dedicated to the growth and enhancement of the counseling profession. It
is the world's largest association exclusively representing
professional counselors in various practice settings. (from the
website: http://www.counseling.org )<br /><br />International Association of
Counseling Services (IACS) encourages and aids counseling services
throughout the United States and internationally in meeting high
professional standards, by improving its visibility and quality of
services. It informs the public about competence and reliability, and
fosters communication among counseling services operating in a variety
of settings. Accreditation is open to University and College Counseling
Centers and Public and Private Counseling Agencies. (from the website:
http://iacsinc.org )<br /><br />The Association for Specialists in Group
Work (ASGW), a division of the ACA, was founded to promote quality in
group work training, practice, and research both nationally and
internationally. (from the website: http://www.asgw.org )<br /><br />Association
for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) is one of the oldest
interdisciplinary organizations in the field of dying, death and
bereavement. Its nearly 2000 members consist of an array of mental and
medical health personnel, educators, clergy, funeral directors, and
volunteers. ADEC offers numerous educational opportunities through
annual conference, courses and workshops, its certification program, and
via its journal, The Forum. (from the website: http://www.adec.org )<br /><br />Analysis of the historical and philosophical relevance of one specialized area to the practice of counseling: <br /><br />American Mental Health Counseling Association<br /><br />AMHCA
is a growing community of nearly 7,000 clinical mental health
counselors, making a critical impact on the lives of Americans and give a
voice to our profession nationwide. It has served the professional
needs of mental health counselors for more than 30 years. It assists its
membership in career development, and assists providers in the field by
working toward recognition for mental health counselors under Medicare,
and in general, advocates for greater acceptance of mental health
counselors currently recognized by other federal programs and private
health care insurance plans. It expands professional knowledge and
builds networks among professional peers for the ultimate purpose of
improving service to clients. (from the website: http://www.amhca.org)<br /><br />References<br /><br />Feldmen,
S. (2003) Reflections on the 40th anniversary of the US Community
Mental Health Centers Act. Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Psychiatry; 37:662-667<br /><br />Gladding, S. T. (1996) Counseling: A comprehensive profession (3rd edition). Macmillan Pub Co.<br /><br />Healey,
A. C., & Hays, D. G. (2011). Defining counseling professional
identity from a gendered perspective: Role conflict and development.
Professional Issues in Counseling Journal, Spring. Retrieved on March
11, 2013 from
http://www.shsu.edu/~piic/DefiningCounselingProfessionalIdentityfromaGenderedPerspective.htm<br /><br />Kleist,
D. M., & White, L. J. (1997). The values of counseling: A disparity
between a philosophy of prevention in counseling and counselor
practice and training. 41(2), 128Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-89089326417718906392013-03-19T14:52:00.000-07:002013-03-19T14:52:06.256-07:00Working as Part of a Multidisciplinary TeamOne of the major tasks of the mental health profession stated in the
American Counseling Association (ACA) Code of Ethics (2005) is to
“encourage client growth and development in ways that foster the
interest and welfare of clients”. Professional researchers in the field
of counseling strive to illuminate the meaning of this competency for
mental health professionals aspiring to practice effective standards of
care. Three of the best practice strategies that help counseling
professionals meet these standards are consultation, advocacy, and
collaboration. <br /><br />Consultation for professional counselors involves
“acting on behalf of an identified client through interaction with
another professional consultee or other stakeholder in the client’s
welfare” (Brown, Pryzwansky, & Schulte, 2010). Advocacy is a
values-driven effort that strives to promote systemic change at the
macro level in an effort to promote social justice where barriers to
equity and access appear, and restrict full and active participation at
the socio-cultural level (Crethar, Torres, Rivera, & Nash, 2008).
Collaboration in counseling means working together with professionals of
related disciplines, to meet the standards recommended by the ACA (Moe,
Perera-Diltz & Sepulveda, 2010). Collaboration occurs at the
individual level, and includes service provision by medical physicians,
psychiatrists, social workers, addictions counselors, marriage and
family counselors, career counselors, school counselors, and mental
health counselors, to name several. Effective collaboration also occurs
at the systemic level, as identified by Bryan (2009) who proposes that
counselors engage strategic family-community partnerships “to enhance
direct counseling services to clients”. <br /><br />Mental health services
are delivered proficiently and integrally when consultation and advocacy
spring from collaborative efforts between professionals. The
professionals, charged with exercising collaborative roles maximize the
impact on the client’s well-being while engaging strategies from both
internal and external sources. Internal impacts are those that affect
the client directly through practical application of knowledge
(theories) and skills, such as services provided by mental health
counselors and addictions counselors. External impacts are maximized
when staff exercises specific roles that advocate for systemic change,
such as services provided by social workers (Mellin, Hunt & Nichols,
2011). When these roles collaborate to work on behalf of the client’s
interest, their personal growth and development is fostered, their
welfare is advanced, and the standards of ethical care are met. <br /><br />An example of strategic collaboration enhancing the client’s welfare may be recognized in the following case example:<br /><br />Paul,
a 32-year old man, seeks counseling at a community mental health
center. He has recently returned from his third deployment to a combat
zone. He reports drinking frequently and feeling anxious. For the past
three weeks, Paul has been extremely worried that his neighbors are
spying on him. Paul's wife has tried to reassure him that he is
imagining things, but he cannot get these concerns out of his mind. Paul
feels reluctant to leave the house and has missed over a week of work.<br /><br />The
collaborative team engaging this client in this hypothetic facility
includes those who exercise roles as mental health counselor, addictions
counselor, and social worker. According to Brown et al (2010), these
would qualify as professionally appropriate consultees by virtue of
their education, training, and credentials. The social worker would help
Paul connect to resources related to his status as a veteran. Such
resources may include group work for those struggling with PTSD, so
collaboration at this level might appear as an external link to
resources at the local VA hospital. If a group does not exist, the
social worker could develop a strategy for initiating one. The
addictions counselor would assist Paul in recognizing his maladaptive
dependence on alcohol and apply theories to assist him in coming to
terms with his recovery process. The mental health counselor could
possibly use appropriate mental health diagnostic tools such as the
bio-psycho-social assessment and the DSM-IV-TR Statistical Manual to
evaluate Axis-specific level of function, and determine appropriate
referrals. The referrals (a psychiatrist/physician) may indicate
psychopharmacological treatments or other higher order therapeutic
interventions relevant to the symptomology displayed. In this case Paul
would require in-depth assessment for agoraphobic behavior, anxiety, and
paranoia (which may be related to the impact of drenching his brain
with toxic alcohol, or a result of lingering effects of
unrecognized/untreated PTSD, or a combination of many complex factors).
<br /><br />The role of each professional included on this particular
multi-disciplinary team would be distinct, but their collaboration would
be cohesive, and it would be comprehensive. Their strategic plan
ideally would be developed according to the desires of the client, yet
without compromising diagnostic altruism. Hopefully, their
intentionality would culminate in integrated delivery of services, thus
fulfilling the expected professional standards of care designed to meet
this unique client’s service plan goals.<br /><br />American Counseling
Association. (2005). ACA Code of Ethics. Retrieved March 5, 2013 from
http://www.counseling.org/Resources/aca-code-of-ethics.pdf<br /><br />Brown,
D., Pryzwansky, W., & Schulte, A. (2010). Psychological
consultation and collaboration: Introduction to theory and practice. The
Merill Counseling Series. (7th ed.) Prentiss Hall. <br /><br />Bryan,
Julia.(2009) Engaging clients, families, and communities as partners in
mental health. Journal of Counseling and Development. volume 87, issue
4. pg. 507<br /><br />Crethar, H., Torres-Rivera, E., & Nash, S. (2008).
In search of common threads: Linking multicultural, feminist, and
social justice counseling paradigms. Journal of Counseling &
Development, volume 86, pages 269-278<br /><br />Mellin, Elizabeth A., Hunt,
Brandon, & Nichols, Lindsey M. (2011) Counselor professional
identity: Findings and implications for counseling and interprofessional
collaboration. Journal of Counseling and Development, volume 89, issue
2, pages 140–147.<br /><br />Moe, Jeffrey L., Perera-Diltz, Dilani, &
Sepulveda, Victoria. (2010). Are consultation and social justice
advocacy similar? Exploring the perceptions of professional counselors
and counseling students. Journal for Social Action in Counseling and
Psychology, volume 2, issue 2, pages 106–123Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-12267726946890131702013-03-19T14:50:00.002-07:002013-03-19T14:50:52.312-07:00Professional Identity and TechnologyThree Topics of Equal Relevance in Mental Health Counselor Development<br /> <br />
In the article Professional Identity Development: A Grounded Theory of
Transformational Tasks of New Counselors (2010), authors Gibson,
Dollarhide & Moss designed a study purporting to produce a theory of
professional development. The researchers identified the process of
professional counseling formation as culminating in the “successful
integration of personal attributes and professional training in the
context of a professional community” (pg. 23). They perceive this
process to be transformational and, by their estimation, rests on three
pillars:<br /> - Embodying of the definition of Counseling<br /> - Professional Growth<br /> - Transformation to Systemic Identity <br /><br />
With respect to the first pillar, the American Counseling Association,
in its Code of Ethics, defines counseling in terms of what counselors
do. “Counselors encourage client growth and development in ways that
foster the interest and welfare of clients, and promote formation of
healthy relationships”. This statement exemplifies the essence of the
first pillar. The second pillar, professional growth, promotes the focus
initiated by the first, and the third pillar, transformation to
systemic identity, sustains it. There is, however, a fourth pillar
unmentioned in this study, and that is the pillar of ethical standards
itself, which serves to oversee right relations between professionals
and those they serve. These prompt and direct those guiding principles,
and also shape and inform developmental progression. <br /><br /> With
regard to the affect technology has on professional identity development
in the realm of ethical practices, the proper application of ethical
standards in areas such as confidentiality, privacy, informed consent,
and dual relationships, present ethical challenges to counselors at each
stage of development. Since it is common practice in many agencies to
transmit, store and relay information over a variety of electronic means
such as fax, email, voice mail, to name a few, counselors in training,
beginning at internship, have access to protected information. Despite
its convenience, proper use of information must be exercised if one is
to maintain adherence to laws and statutes governing its transmission,
no matter what mode is used. <br /><br />Counselors in training who work in
the mental health field (or in my case, in Geriatric Care Management)
must be trained in proprietary use and practice of Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy laws. If standards
are to achieve their highest purpose, that being to form effective
practitioners in the crucible of the ‘transformation to systemic
identity’, then they must practice what is preached, and that message
must generate from the heart of the formational process.<br /> <br />
Personally, this article provokes several questions such as: Do I
possess the attributes required to establish a suitable identity as a
professional? How will I successfully cultivate and integrate the
knowledge, skills and values that form the core essence of the
profession? Will I be prepared, when the time comes, to connect theory
with practice? Will the professional community confirm me as a
legitimate member of its society? And, with that accomplished, will I
manage to dodge potential litigious actions that, almost inevitably,
will be leveled against me at some point during the course of my career?
Thankfully, with insurance coverage as a safety net, the fear of losing
the house, the car and the shirt are slightly detained!<br /><br /> On a
brighter note, however, one presumes (hopes?) that the resiliencies of
the profession far outweigh the risks. In our technology driven culture,
we have access to a wealth of web based instructional content for
continuing education and on-going formation. We use webinars, power
point presentations, skype, and email, telephone, etc., to transmit
learning information. Why would such use of resources not be considered
worthy of use as part of a skill set when working with individual
consumers of mental health services? Psycho-education, one-on-one
counseling, instant messaging, video conferencing, are valid modes of
service provision that have become legitimized by vanguard associations
that have sprung up consequently to develop and provide policies to
guide modal specific service delivery practices. (A number of such
organizations are listed in the article Applying Technology to Online
Counseling: Suggestions for the Beginning E-Therapist, Elleven &
Allen). <br /><br /> The three topics, counselor formation, ethics, and the
use of technology in the training and practice of counseling, are
related and intertwined. If one of the major tasks of the mental health
counselor is to “encourage client growth and development in ways that
foster the interest and welfare of clients”, then it behooves the
practitioner to adopt skills shared by the general populace in order to
keep pace, and ultimately optimize choices for therapeutic service
delivery (Guanipa, Nolte & Lizarraga, 2002). But perhaps more
importantly, it challenges them to complete their service delivery in an
ethically sound manner, that best ensures the confidentiality and
security of protected health information when it is transferred,
received, handled, or shared.<br /><br />American Counseling Association.
(2005). ACA Code of Ethics. Retrieved March 5, 2013 from
http://www.counseling.org/Resources/aca-code-of-ethics.pdf<br /><br />Elleven,
Russell K. & Allen, Jeff. Applying technology to online
counseling: Suggestions for the beginning e-therapist. Journal of
Instructional Psychology, Vol. 31, No. 3.<br /><br />Gibson, Donna.,
Dollarhide, Collette T. & Moss, Julie T. (2010) Professional
identity development: A grounded theory of transformational tasks of new
counselors. Counselor Education & Supervision Volume 50 <br /><br />Guanipa,
C , Nolte, L. M,, & Lizarraga, J, (2002), Using the Internet to
help diverse population: A bilingual website. Journal of Technology in
Human Services, 19, 13-23.Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-37634370798857566392012-05-18T07:02:00.002-07:002012-05-18T07:04:26.199-07:00The Story of a Boy<span style="font-size: large;">Geographically speaking, I have lived in several states during my lifetime. Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Kentucky. I lived in them, and I also left them, easily moving from one to the other.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Emotionally speaking, I had also lived in several states as well, the most memorable being Shame, Anger and Resentment, though these were not so easy to leave; in fact they were, for many years, and many reasons, impossible to leave. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">However, a couple of weeks ago I made a few significant connections to some of the more elusive themes that dominated the course of my recovery over the last several years, and in doing so, found it possible to possible to bid fond farewell to these states. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I must say, these last 12 months, while the most challenging yet, apparently have been the most fruitful in the entire 35 year recovery span. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Prior to that, I found it difficult to leave Anger and Resentment, rather, more or less, stuck in a cycle, perceiving myself as a victim of all the trauma that impacted me during the course of my life, beginning with the earliest days where I learned how to be a member within the context of a family system that spawned and molded me in preparation for entering the larger society.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I was raised by well meaning parents who had no clue about how to proceed with raising 8 children, born within 13 year span. Neither of them came from families that offered successful models for doing so. The bleak times and impoverished circumstances under which they themselves were brought up, left them ill-equipped to meet the challenges that lay before them. However, they flew by the seat of their pants, and pretty much reacted daily as impulse dictated for dealing with the stress of the most current pressing need.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Having no skills passed on inter-generationally to help them achieve their goal and ignorant of the range of emotional and psychological needs of their offspring, they focused on what they knew, that being the needs of the body: food, shelter and clothing. The moral code of their own religious culture supplied the rule book which established acceptable guidelines for justifying their disciplinary methods. We criticize those methods today as being faulty and negligent, however, at the time, it seemed for them the only viable options; options which were justified by the cultural and moral systems which had served the disciplinary methods of the preceding generation, those that shaped and formed them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Those methods included the use of violence as a control method for inhibiting the volition of the child, restricting its liberties to the realm of what was deemed acceptable according to a core value system that had been transmitted through their parents. The nature of this system was not such that behavioral expectations were shaped by love and encouragement, with plenty of room built in for mistakes, and learning the ropes of self-determination. No, this was a purposefully designed punitive system, where behaviors were regimented, and failures to remain loyal to its expectations were met with severe disapproval and repercussions in the form of abusive physical acts. Under such circumstances, there was no show of love, no modeling of warmth and compassion, only a climate of fear and retribution. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But what did the child know? This was his world, and to complain or </span><span style="font-size: large;">resist the governance of this system</span><span style="font-size: large;"> would never have entered his mind. He did what was expected and what he was told to do. His life became a matter of compliance. His daily bread and purpose became a simple task of staying out of the radar of the stressed out rulers, following orders to avoid punishment, </span><span style="font-size: large;">though knowing from experience that this was not possible. All he could do was try to steer clear of becoming the next target of attack</span><span style="font-size: large;">. This was the substance and form of what it meant to be 'happy'. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">What did the child do with all the emotions that had not been validated within the aegis of such a regime? What happened to all the unexpressed fear, frustration, anger and resentment? The answer is that the child repressed these emotive responses. Having no safe place to in which to vent them, they got stuffed, and went underground. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Forced to hide his true feeling and emotions and thoughts, the child began to form an alternative personality, one that would be deemed acceptable, who could live in safety under the terms of endearment established by the governors of the systemic regime. Powerless to resist, and in order to survive, thereby ensuring a secure existence without fear of violent repercussion, </span><span style="font-size: large;">he adapted by developing a false self</span><span style="font-size: large;">. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> The false self did not live happily ever after. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The false self, frustrated, defeated, stripped of its natural sense of wonder and curiosity, beat down by the constant oppression of its inquisitive nature was left feeling rather shallow and out of step with the rest of the world, and himself. Everything else all around him seemed to be full of vibrancy, eagerness, spontaneity and desire to meet the joyful challenges of living. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But the false self living in the heart and soul of this child, could not relate; he could not just 'go with the flow', because the seed of life planted in him at his emergence into the world had been trampled, stifled and crushed. However, it had not been obliterated. Something in the self that was real, that which could not be destroyed, prevailed in spite of the obstacles inhibiting its growth. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The child left the nest that nurtured him, that formed and shaped his values. He fled the tribe that demanded unflinching loyalty under penalty of violence, rejection and abandonment. And as he left, he took only the clothes swaddling him: Fear, compliance, avoidance. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But wait, there's more.......... </span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-86480885321547589622012-01-29T17:40:00.000-08:002012-01-29T17:45:50.285-08:00The Trip to Bountiful<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Death and Dying in “The
Trip to Bountiful” </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> The Trip to Bountiful is a vignette in
the later life of Carrie Watts, an elder southern woman living out her last
chapter with her son, Ludie, and daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae, in 1940’s Houston,
Texas. The story unfolds as the camera peeks in on the three inhabitants,
sharing cramped quarters in their one-bedroom apartment, early in the wee hours
of a summer morning. One by one, the three enter the scene, restless from the
heat and the gnawing undercurrent of anxiety typifying their shared, uneventful lives. Ludie emerges
first from the couple’s bedroom (separated by curtained French doors) into the
common living space which doubles as a sleeping area for “Mother Watts”), followed
by Jessie Mae, seemingly reluctant to permit Ludie to savor the quiet company
of his mother alone. As the dialogue ensues their relationship dynamics are
slowly unveiled.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Mother Watts appears on one hand as
coy and child-like, yet on the other, stubborn and determined. Ludie is
hen-pecked by his pushy and domineering, pestering yet sensitive wife, whose
disdain knows neither boundary nor restraint. In many ways the story of their
lives is a story of their deaths, particularly with regard to the subtle ways
that people die from moment to moment through small gestures of concession made
in good faith to alleviate tensions constraining their most intimate alliances.
Living in such close quarters puts everyone on edge, but each character in this
story has their own singular unresolved crisis contributing to the blanket of doleful
anxiety that knits their lives together in common. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">For Jessie Mae, her dying to self is
packaged in the frustration she feels for having settled for far less than she
felt she deserved in marrying Ludie. She likes the finery of clothing and hair
styles, and the fact of the matter is there is not enough money to support her
champagne tastes. Throughout the first scene she repeatedly hassles Mother
Watts about the pension check that has not arrived on schedule, blaming her for
losing it, or putting it somewhere and forgetting where that might be. Though not consciously preoccupied with
physical death per se, Jessie Mae’s protestations and complaints rather
indicate a desire to avoid sliding down into the dreaded toothy jowls of
homelessness and insecurity: a sure fire death for an ego as fragile as hers.
Ludie is a defeated man, struggling to maintain his employment status while
living with the unresolved pain surrounding the death of his grandfather (which
is reviewed later during the film’s climactic moment). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The main theme of the movie revolves
around Mother Watts’ desire to return before she dies to the hometown and the
homestead she has not seen for twenty years. Bountiful, the town where she grew
up, is where she buried two babies and raised her son Ludie. She dreams of the
day she could go back and “get her hands into the soil again”; to visit her old
childhood friend Callie Davis, and “see Bountiful one last time” before she
dies. Repeated attempts to realize her dream are foiled time and again by
Jessie Mae’s persistent interference, but Mother Watts finally escapes one day
unimpeded. With only a small tote bag, purse, and her prized pension check
tucked secretly into her bosom, she steals off to the bus station, and on to
the bus. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">During the bus ride she makes the
acquaintance of a young woman, Thelma, who is dealing with her own death
concerns. As it turns out, she is on her way back to stay with her parents, and
await her new husband’s return from a World War II tour of duty overseas. The
conversation they share during the bus trip focuses on themes of loss, faith
and disappointment. The dialogue leads to a tearful fugue of reminiscence of
the early days growing up as a young girl in Bountiful, and how Mother Watts
laments that she could not marry the man she truly loved, and who loved her,
because of class differences. Because she was a poor farm girl, while he was of
the merchant class, their love could not be realized and she had to settle for an
untrue love. As she recounts the situation, she cries, perhaps for the first
time, to release her deep dark secret to the compassionate receptive ears of
someone willing to share the burden of a lifetime of grief; someone who would
understand her loss and her need to mourn, freely and finally, the death of
that piece of the past that occupied her heart space for so many long years. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The town nearest Bountiful is twelve
miles away, and because Bountiful is so decrepit now, it is vacant, deserted.
Still, since the story is relayed over the backdrop of the Spring season, its
pastures, in stark contrast to the themes of loss and death, are in full
blossom. These juxtaposed dynamics confirm rather than disavow the credibility
of the story, because in the affect of it, we are reminded, even as death
elbows its way to the forefront of consciousness, that hope is alive and well,
busy springing eternal behind that shimmering veil. The bus arrives and drops
her off, but by now it is early morning once again, and there is no
transportation available to drive her the twelve miles to her final point of
arrival. She decides to rest on the bench and wait until dawn, at which time
when she plans to hire a car to drive her there. In the meantime, the local
sheriff has received word about Mrs. Watts and when he locates her at the bus
station, he informs her that her son and daughter-in-law are on their way to
take her back to Houston. Now her anticipation is killed and her anxiety and
disappoint peaks – she has come this far, only to be forced in the end to turn
back. She won’t be able to realize this one last dream. She begs, pleads, and
negotiates with the officer to please drive her the last twelve miles to
Bountiful. She gets herself so riled up,
she has one of her ‘sinking spells’, becoming light-headed with blood pressure
rising. He takes pity on her, yet feels it important to have her condition
checked by the local doctor. (Considering that even at this point during the
1940’s heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States,
adding the ‘weak heart’ attribute was an effective device for heightening the
tension for viewers of the film). After the town doctor examines her, making
certain she not at risk for heart attack or death, he gives approval, and the
sheriff decides to honor her request. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In the text <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying</i> (DeSpalder and
Strickland) the authors quote a source stating “one of the most important and
unique aspects of human experience is the awareness of one’s own mortality” (p.
24). This seems to be true of Carrie
Watts who appears to have resolved the tensions one would naturally encounter
in their final life stage. Having arrived at a point of realizing her fullest
potential while honoring her life’s limitations, she accepts the fact that her
resources, now spent, are beyond revival, and what’s left to accomplish is a
panning review of her life efforts. Having justified the moral quality of her
existence, she now desires to make peace with the ghosts of her past. Her
attempt to return to Bountiful is a curtain call of sorts, beckoning her return
to her roots, back to the same dust that was the substance and sum of her
entire life, and in this sense she is already ‘living with an awareness of
death’. Bountiful was the place that framed her most relevant life episodes,
and encapsulated all her life seasons and cycles. It was the source of her
psychic birth, and for her to come full circle, she needed for it to become the
place of her psychic death. A return to Bountiful would provide her with the
perfect place to ‘contemplate the basic questions’ of her existence that humans
face as they near the end of life’s road (p. 25). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> Relevant to religious elements of
thanatology in ‘The Trip to Bountiful’, Mrs. Watts, as a devout Christian
formed in her youth by Bible Belt culture, has a strong devotion to hymns. The
director chose the hymn “Softly and Tenderly”, weaving it like a strand
throughout as a backdrop of the movie:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Softly and tenderly
Jesus is calling, Calling for you and for me;<br />
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching, Watching for you and for me.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;<br />
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling, O sinner, come home!</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Time is now fleeting,
the moments are passing, Passing from you and from me;<br />
Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming, Coming for you and for me.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">This
hymn parenthetically frames the context for the entire movie, and underscores
its themes of homecoming, shadows gathering, deathbeds coming, and this is
precisely brought to bear in the movie’s final scene.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> Contentedly, Mother Watts arrives at
the doorstep of her precious Bountiful. She stands in front of it, assessing
its current status: doors and windows now gone, empty of furniture, leaving a
mere skeleton of a structure. Stepping into the empty house, Mother Watts
surveys the now bare floors and walls. With her finger she retraces old
scratches in the woodwork, and slides her palm across the dusty shelf of the mantle
ledge imagining earlier times and remembering the objects that used to occupy
the now empty spaces. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> Jostled from her reverie by the
sound of Ludie’s voice calling ‘Mama! Mama!, Mother Watts goes to the porch and
greets her son with sheepish face of a child caught with her hand in the cookie
jar. “How do you feel?”, Ludie asks. “I feel much better son …. I got my
wish!”. Once apologies are offered, the conversation turns to topics of the day,
and Mother Watts, through misty eyes and averted glance relays how she just
found out her young girlhood friend Callie Davis died the other day before she
arrived. The funeral had been held the day before. Ludie apologies for not
having brought his mother to Bountiful much sooner, stating that he just
‘thought it would be easier if we didn’t see the house again’. Mother Watts
pushes past his denial saying, “Now that you’re here, don’t you want to come
inside and have a look around?” Ludie declines saying “I don’t see much use in
it; I’d rather remember it like it was”, implying that there was something
unresolved from the past that he’d rather leave buried there. When Mother Watts
asks Ludie if he remembers her father, Ludie launches into a tirade about how
he remembers at age ten when he died and his grandfather’s best friend took him
to his knee and told Ludie how his grandfather’s life was a real example to
follow. Ludie’s grieving grandmother made him promise that when he grew up he
would have a son and name him after his grandfather. However, Ludie did not
have any children and he felt both ashamed that he was never able to keep that
promise and that he never had any children at all, even though his friends went
on to raise families themselves. This underscores the disappointment he must
have carried throughout his entire life that he failed to measure up to an
expectation set upon him at an earlier time of his life. However, a young boy
could never predict how the vicissitudes of life would serve to interfere with
even the best of intentions to fulfill those expectations. And so in this
regard, the trip to Bountiful not only served Mother Watt’s need to find
closure, but also the need for her son to find resolution and reconciliation,
two themes that are present in thanatology as requirements for resolving the anxiety
that surrounds death, ultimately leading to new paths of healing and hope.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> The story of The Trip to Bountiful
was a shining example of Robert Kastenbaum’s Edge Theory and its Continuum of
Awareness and Denial. Mother Watts, wanting to embrace the past, was situated
on the Awareness pole of the spectrum, while Ludie leaned more toward the Denial
end, as evidenced by his desire to avoid facing the past. What this movie shows
us is that it is futile to resist the inevitability of death. That the sooner
we recognize and accept that life, as the song says, is ‘fleeting, its moments
passing from you and from me’, the sooner we can learn to welcome the
inevitability of our own demise, and begin to cooperate and make peace with the
process, rather than treat it as an eventuality to be denied and avoided. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-65672158444338833372012-01-19T05:20:00.000-08:002012-01-19T05:24:40.559-08:00Regarding Caveman Masculinity: A Rant <span style="font-size: large;">Inspired by a reading of McCaughey's "Caveman Masculinity "<br /><br />It's
all a capitalist's game and depends on who is selling what …..and what
we are being sold mainly is a ticket to the nearest point of sale. I
really don't want to come across as cynical; it is a capitalistic
society after all but people's fears are constantly being exploited by
those who have the economic capacity and resources to do so. We are
buying what is being sold because we desparately feel the need to be
accepted. It's human nature. There's something about the need for
nurture that blinds us to this fact, (like a person in the throes of
passion who forgot the birth control and in a frenzied moment of
impassioned denial casts their fate to the whim of the moment). And
because we exist in a society that moves at such a fast pace, where
split second decisions are being expected constantly of consumers, when
forced to decide we do so impulsively, without stopping to allow
rationality to eclipse immediate gratification. This is what the
marketplace is all about (….sorry business majors!) and, note to self,
there is no use lamenting the moral implications of exploitation because
this is America after all, and our ethic is such that we celebrate
social Darwinism as the ultimate prize. Those who have the means to do
so are within their right here to do whatever they choose within legal
reason. When DuPont figured out a way to create a sensation by mass
producing silk stockings at a price level that even lower income women
could afford, we bought into their image making money scheme. It wasn't
so much that they were selling stockings as much as that they were
selling 'class' , and doesn't everyone want to appear 'classy'? Doesn't
everyone want to appear socially, biologically, intellectually relevant?
And along with the class comes status and elevated status translates
into more power and more power translates into more opportunity and
more opportunity translates into different things depending on the
defined goals for the particular gendered class an individual subscribes
to.<br /><br />If you are male, your status/power is linked with your
ability to trump the powers/status of the next male. (Correct me if I'm
wRONg but the same seems likely to be true for females also). In our
civilized society today that means being a well trained caveman in
intellectual form, savvy, physically 'hot', unbeatable: a winner in all
realms of being: a superman! How is this different from the caveman in
the earlier stage of evolution? Is it different or is it really same
thing in a different wrapping? Because when it all boils down to the
ultimate display of power, i.e., the arena of fisticuffs, it does not
really matter if you have a penis or not (I tried to think of another
way to say that, but saying "having a vagina or not" does not convey the
same message! ….that in itself could be an entire topic of discussion).
What does matter is who can kick whose ass in the arena. And those that
can triumph there get the "prize" ….. what is the prize? Again it all
depends on what satisfies one's self interest. Female or male, how do I
get my needs met? And where do 'needs' come from? Are they fabricated
like 'wants' are? Or are they hard wired in as part of the survival
instinct. I think that's the ticket. Needs are inborn, and wants are
constructed according to the popular devices and mechanisms that are the
product of a given socioeconomic current.</span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-25291101353298156412011-04-29T10:39:00.000-07:002011-04-29T10:39:51.062-07:00Debunking Gender Codes: From Deviance to Variance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHaZ-MVyHPgW4LESWy7MW2JOWRbk0xSef_XdGfvlYDA8pnAuMUpV8h0btWtPWSlMSBy4my6cTPrsEjbAFFedJyo-Wmjlq-cwVr6rZsjmZOHan-OYSh0tipAcpkLmP-5iRhEZ_QqtShRhY/s1600/Gender+Codes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHaZ-MVyHPgW4LESWy7MW2JOWRbk0xSef_XdGfvlYDA8pnAuMUpV8h0btWtPWSlMSBy4my6cTPrsEjbAFFedJyo-Wmjlq-cwVr6rZsjmZOHan-OYSh0tipAcpkLmP-5iRhEZ_QqtShRhY/s400/Gender+Codes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><style>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"></span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Introduction</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">The Encyclopedia of Behavior Sciences specifies the core concepts of Western humanism as being identity, science, truth and authenticity [<sup>1</sup>]. And out of the impulse to define the cultural relevance of these concepts as articulations of current social theory, normative identity movements have arisen to challenge the structuralist ideologies that produced them. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">The main purpose of these identity movements was to transform society in such a way as to more accurately reflect individual interests and world view. For a movement to occur there needs to be a sense of common identity or purpose, and sufficient political/economic space to mobilize the movement. This was apparent in the labor rights movements and women’s suffrage movements of the late 19th and early 20th century. Ultimately, the fermentation of these efforts resulted in a variety of movements midwived by the Civil Rights Era. Beginning with racial freedom, women’s rights, and liberation from repressive binary sexual and gender strictures, its repercussions unleashed an avalanche of social upheaval, resulting in the American Psychiatric Association voting to remove the stigma of homosexuality as a mental illness from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual in 1973. Though much to the chagrin of the moral majority, this identity movement cut a swath which paved the way for a new path of the social deconstruction process, birthing the emergence of Queer Rights social action and advocacy groups. And thus the struggle with “gay rights” began, fueled by the conflict that arose between moralists and their rivals, the liberal thinking Americans who wanted nothing less than the same constitutional protections guaranteed all citizens: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">After gay liberation began to build momentum in the United States there was no stopping the movement, as this fledgling identity movement galvanized a cohort to work incessantly to modify social norms that affect individual’s private, civil, and professional lives. Today the movement’s initiatives aim for acceptance of differences and want to change social stereotypes. These differences are of a sexual, intellectual, or physical nature, such as sexual orientation, whose participants feel that they are the victims of prejudice. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> However, as the movement evolved and as research would eventually indicate, it became obvious that sex and gender were really two different aspects of a very complex subject. What had been formerly thought as ‘deviant behavior’ ultimately became accepted and embraced simply as naturally occurring aspects of human character that not only were beyond control, but that in fact were greatly misunderstood, and fascinating components of being human.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">The Rise of Queer Theory: Evolving Trends in Gender Variance</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Prior to the eventuality of the APA’s removal of homosexuality as a disorder, people who did not fit into nice neat binary categories either stayed hidden, or gathered in secret societies and social clubs that would never have been considered worthy of inclusion in a Norman Rockwell gallery depicting vignettes of mainstream society. Mainstream society had been groomed to reject with suspicion and disgust appearances of non-gender normative social models. As such, there were no visible Modern Day families, no Will and Grace, no Angels in America, and definitely no Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, words and ideas like fag, dyke and queer represented the worst social stigma known to society. Deemed worse than wife beaters, murderers, and rapists, non-traditionally oriented folk were considered deviant, the lowest of the low, on par with child molesters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0xG_Z5SkiLJ5-ux0GrVJEJ3tSP4NYRsERwKfPUwRH4ba1yVqXwaYpqR8QiMmIjejP6IqTK_275Qu7r7ystsQgwYU4DwNZVTWWXLcez2g9ltFije_W0mH33Ca-k-my1f3zQ5I5m4Gmdg8/s1600/deviance+2+variance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0xG_Z5SkiLJ5-ux0GrVJEJ3tSP4NYRsERwKfPUwRH4ba1yVqXwaYpqR8QiMmIjejP6IqTK_275Qu7r7ystsQgwYU4DwNZVTWWXLcez2g9ltFije_W0mH33Ca-k-my1f3zQ5I5m4Gmdg8/s320/deviance+2+variance.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">However, the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in the mid 70’s dramatically changed the tenor of public discourse around topics of sexual orientation and behavior. Changes in clearly defined gender roles and characteristics began to be reflected in appearances of unisex hairstyles and fashion, erasing the boundaries that reinforced the assumptions of binary gender identification and expression. Once public silence had been broken on dialogues surrounding the mystique of non-hetero normative social and sexual practices in American culture in the 1980’s, a new wave of intellectual curiosity arose concurrently, taking the form of what came to be regarded as Queer Theory. According to the Encyclopedia of Behavior Sciences [<sup>1</sup>]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">‘Queer theory’ is a theoretical movement with political counterparts that is in constant flux and development, and is characterized more by what it challenges and contests than by what it offers in the shape of a unified social theory. It draws on the work of theorists such as Eve Sedgwick and Judith Butler. Queer Theory ‘describes those gestures or analytical models which dramatize incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations between chromosomal sex, gender and sexual desire (Jagose 1996). In this sense, queer theory is a challenge to the obvious categories (man/woman, butch/femme), oppositions (man vs. woman, heterosexual vs. homosexual), or equations (gender/sex) upon which conventional notions of sexuality and identity rely’ (Hennessy 1993). Queer theory argues instead that sexual desire and sexual practices are not reducible or explicable solely in terms of identity categories, such as gender, race, class, or sexual orientation. It is radically anti-essentialist, in that it challenges a notion of homosexuality as intrinsic, fixed, innate, and universally present across time and space. Queer theorists reject any mode of thought that relies on a conception of identity as unified and self-evident (e.g., I have sex with people of. the opposite sex, therefore I must be heterosexual), and instead demonstrate that desires, sexual practices, and gendered identities are performances and enactments, rather than expressions of ‘true’ subjectivity. Heterosexuality is therefore challenged by queer theory not simply as a ‘hegemonic’ mode of identity, but as a false claim to unity and coherence that is constantly undermined by the incoherencies of sex and gender, incoherencies that the queer analytic hopes to expose and celebrate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Since the early 1990s, ‘Transgender’ as a term has emerged rapidly in the United States to describe someone assigned to one gender who, in one respect or another, does not perform or identify as that gender, and has taken some steps, temporarily or permanently, to modify parts of their person in order to align themselves more authentically with their self-perception. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=1518071198831453494&postID=2529110135329815641" name="GoBack"></a>The emergence of ‘Transgender’ has been shown to be evident in journalism, in popular media representations, in both legislative and academic settings, and in both advocacy and activism.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">David Valentine, anthropological ethnographer and author of <i>Imagining Transgender </i>[<sup>2</sup>] (pg. 33)<i> </i>writes about how the institutionalization of transgender as a category was shaped by the convergence of several intersecting contexts, including those of public health, social services, academics and legislative realms. In his research, he found that many of those labeled transgendered by activists did not know the term or resisted its use. Instead, he reports, they identified as “gay”, a category of sexual rather than gender identity. In analyzing the differences between these two categories he rejects the conflation of these two categories as being contextually similar, and instead points out the distinctions between them. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Sexual orientation speaks more of specific behaviors engaged in by particular persons, whereas gender orientation speaks specifically about the manner in which a person expresses their psycho-emo-spiritual inclinations irrespective of their sexual inclinations. Sexual orientation belies the attractions that people have toward certain others relative to either character or genital attributes (or both). The concept of Transgender essentially separates the biological/sexual component from the psychic component, and removes the collectivism that in the past had drawn direct lines of association between sexual behavior and gender expression. No longer is it applicable to assume that because one’s gender is the opposite of their biological/genital appearance, that they are ‘gay’. Nor is it appropriate to assume that because they self-identify as “straight” that they are only inclined to engage in sexual behaviors with their binary opposite. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">On the other hand, Transgender dissolves the idea of collectivity, and divides the categories of sex and gender into sorting bins that differentiate the two classifications as distinct and separate aspects of personhood. The old notion that those who do not conform to societally constructed ideas about gender norms are exhibiting ‘deviant’ behavior is replaced with non-stigmatizing language that affirms all gender expression as equally valid forms of variance. The general idea is this: a Transgender person is any individual who finds themselves left out of society’s usual gender roles. The term “Transgender” does not necessarily invoke any particular sexual orientation. Transgender people may identify as gay, straight, bisexual, or anywhere in-between [4].</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNz04thBJ38fUxfXuksM8o6O0FVyFoPlt79_uDr_FGuRlJrS8nMO7L8uJ06lOcf_YaPDVN35E5bucKNNRPqbaY3EeMcJ6WbtsB2Fu1CZrhLElM1Xeh0FzU4dfWWpSwIMZZN01CVUqnfXw/s1600/trans+terms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNz04thBJ38fUxfXuksM8o6O0FVyFoPlt79_uDr_FGuRlJrS8nMO7L8uJ06lOcf_YaPDVN35E5bucKNNRPqbaY3EeMcJ6WbtsB2Fu1CZrhLElM1Xeh0FzU4dfWWpSwIMZZN01CVUqnfXw/s400/trans+terms.jpg" width="330" /></a></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Advocacy and Activism: Sprouting Wings</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> In terms of Advocacy and Activism on behalf of people who have been marginalized and discounted as a result of their non-conformance to socially sanctioned gender codes, initiatives have formed through subsequent decades consequentially protecting and defending constitutional rights as citizens of the United States. These efforts to secure equal rights have served individuals on a variety of levels. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> On the individual level, following the removal of the homosexuality from the DSM, with homosexuality no longer perceived as a disorder to be treated and cured, individuals struggling with the internal stress and external pressure to conform, needed no longer deny their authentic natures. Furthermore, since sexual orientation was no longer considered by the psychological and medical fields to be pathological, the treatments took on less a curative approach, and became more supportive and affirming of the individual’s organic mental health process.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> But it was one event in particular that spawned an era of advocacy and activism that would echo far into the future. The Stonewall riots of 1969 were, according to Wikipedia[<sup>3</sup>] “ a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world”. David Valentine (<i>Imagining Transgender</i>) writes about the influence of Stonewall on the social institutional fabric, stating that, from the perspective of the Stonewall activists, that the pathologization of homosexuality was anathema, and furthermore was seen as central to the broader homophobic structures they sought to overturn (pg. 54). From that point on, gay and lesbian activists adopted a variety of tactics including disrupting meetings of the American Psychiatric Association, picketing events, and engaging in other protests. Their platform sought to change the idea that homosexuality was pathological, and that it was a natural variation of sexual behavior. This timely period coincided with ‘major transformations within psychiatry’ (pg. 55), particularly among those who were opposed to the pathologization of homosexuality. Also, the profession, coincidentally, was beginning to place more emphasis on empirically based research which led to the ultimate removal of homosexuality as a disorder from the DSM. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Subsequently, with the stigma now removed from institutions that usually referred to the DSM to take its cues regarding how to perceive and thus diagnose certain behavioral proclivities, the LGBT community began to gain more credibility, support and political power, as it began to sprout wings, in many realms, political, sociological, legal, and judicial. On the community level, mutual self-help support groups and organizations emerged in the form of LGBT community centers that sought to act as resource liaisons for mediation, service provision, and education to meet the needs of the individuals and their families who were frequently denied services because of their sexual orientation or gender status. These community services often link the individual with legal services, medical services, housing options etc. Colleges and Universities began to affirm LGBT history as a field of study, and created departments dedicated to research, while providing affirming support services for LGBT students and faculty. These types of organizations often work in concert with other local advocacy and activism organizations such as[<sup>4</sup>]:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">P-FLAG: Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">MCC: Metropolitan Community Church </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">HRC: Human Rights Campaign</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">GLSEN: Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Finally, the passage of the Matthew Shepard Act ensuring protections against hate crimes for all persons (including sexual minorities) was signed into effect by president Barack Obama on October 28, 2009.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Conclusion</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> Our culture from birth attempts to label the individual according to its biological genital characteristics. And thus identities are constructed according the roles that each of the binary categories are assigned.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">The conflation of two separate aspects of human lives, gender and sexuality, rely on the belief that sexuality and gender are in fact two separate domains. However, reflecting on the etiology of either, it is probably difficult to prove which began first, or which domain had more impact on the other. Even the earliest psychologists identified sexual behaviors in humans from birth, prior to the appearance of gender specific preferences. Gender is best understood as a construct, but the person does not consciously participate in the construction process until the ego appears in more highly developed form further along its developmental chain. By the time the physical/biological domain catches up with and intersects with the emotional/psychological domain, the result is more likely to be a product of the mix of both domains intersecting and modulating throughout all stages and channels of development. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> In a binary system, there is a tendency to ignore the variety that exists outside the realm of the two extremes. Doing so does a disservice to those who do not fall into a binary category in either realm, gender or sexuality. The world is neither all black nor all white. Each aspect of created being displays a vast array of variance. Why would gender and sexuality be exempt?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> In spite of the obsession with enforced binary codes being transmitted culturally through each succeeding generation, strides are being made to unpack the meaning of gender. And it is the emergence of the idea of ‘Transgender” that is helping construct a new lens through which to identify the subtle distinctions in gender. As scholars and activists continue to elucidate new versions of variance, it behooves us to reach back into the past and reclaim the identities that were once misconstrued as deviant, and in doing so, more authentically redefine who we are in the present, and ultimately construct positive and affirming sexuality and gender frames for future generations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">References</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">[<sup>1</sup>] Encyclopedia of Behavioral Sciences ©</span> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">2001 Elsevier Ltd.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/referenceworks/9780080430768</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">[<sup>2</sup>] Valentine, David, Imagining Transgender. Duke University Press, ©2007</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">[<sup>3</sup>] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">[<sup>4</sup>] http://www.gaycenter.org/gip</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">NTAC= National Transgender Advocacy Coalition: http://www.ntac.org/</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Nanda, Serena. Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations. Waveland Press, Inc. Long Grove IL, ©2000</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><br />
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</div>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-32207167954753549952011-03-30T16:58:00.000-07:002011-03-31T02:28:27.511-07:00Vietnam era Veterans and Co-occurring PTSD/S<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUnvleHQjCEWwyVs4r1xT2PdK9vsSXoPZhgWZuhRDI-eerVtCbouDuYSQu7ZMkMf9nQGHmA3ik_dGlf5EPja9CLgBr74_3xpjI7skUSpENdfWAKaCK0SiDlFpbFecPIkQBxk_w2TC4mWc/s1600/vets+1.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUnvleHQjCEWwyVs4r1xT2PdK9vsSXoPZhgWZuhRDI-eerVtCbouDuYSQu7ZMkMf9nQGHmA3ik_dGlf5EPja9CLgBr74_3xpjI7skUSpENdfWAKaCK0SiDlFpbFecPIkQBxk_w2TC4mWc/s320/vets+1.png" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOvR3J-S6QAvcZDXEqC4NbU9aItCNJV_v_lQqucp17Hckiy8fyVcq7Da-u8EKbBTm_2n-efLuwJvX7OR3pU_7X0hK7Qqfi8DSOL63AMj72ctv3b5piUubzYW3lSFDb3Y6gbcfJQIzSQKA/s1600/Vets+4.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJLfxuQ3zcSPgJWVqibUg0dqjN3ODQTgAVUrqWlNsWrwEOCUhTrV1nHVrJYVlUM26IM3LqmN-t93XQ5l2507Dkun4d7BWPcPCosys_LWmkDQRRokVSfW2OLPUGbA-dzk-2RThcb-jrttg/s1600/vets+2.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Historical Experience as a whole and relevance to Social Work practice:</b><br />
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Vietnam Veterans upon returning home presented the social work community with a variety of issues that required professional level assistance. These issues included homelessness, domestic violence, post-deployment readjustment, and substance abuse to name but a few. In keeping with the NASW code of ethics, Social Workers focus their skills on several areas of competence, but in particular, the Dignity and Worth of the Person, the value and importance of enhancing human relationships as relevant to the issues facing this population. </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJLfxuQ3zcSPgJWVqibUg0dqjN3ODQTgAVUrqWlNsWrwEOCUhTrV1nHVrJYVlUM26IM3LqmN-t93XQ5l2507Dkun4d7BWPcPCosys_LWmkDQRRokVSfW2OLPUGbA-dzk-2RThcb-jrttg/s1600/vets+2.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJLfxuQ3zcSPgJWVqibUg0dqjN3ODQTgAVUrqWlNsWrwEOCUhTrV1nHVrJYVlUM26IM3LqmN-t93XQ5l2507Dkun4d7BWPcPCosys_LWmkDQRRokVSfW2OLPUGbA-dzk-2RThcb-jrttg/s320/vets+2.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Social Work plays a pivotal role in the delivery of services to the Vietnam Veterans. On the micro level, direct practice efforts strive to empower the individual through direct counseling by designing outcomes that advance personal efficacy. <br />
On the mezzo level Social Work partners with community organizations to broker support networks by connecting clients with medical and mental health services, mutual help groups, housing, and the appropriate social welfare programs designed to meet their needs. <br />
Macro level focus includes broad community planning, coordination, advocacy and integration of services on the federal, state, county and local levels. Social Work, because of its leadership, flexibility, and commitment to "Putting Veterans First", continues to thrive as a profession in the current health care environment. <br />
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<b>Vietnam Veteran History of Advocacy</b> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOvR3J-S6QAvcZDXEqC4NbU9aItCNJV_v_lQqucp17Hckiy8fyVcq7Da-u8EKbBTm_2n-efLuwJvX7OR3pU_7X0hK7Qqfi8DSOL63AMj72ctv3b5piUubzYW3lSFDb3Y6gbcfJQIzSQKA/s1600/Vets+4.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOvR3J-S6QAvcZDXEqC4NbU9aItCNJV_v_lQqucp17Hckiy8fyVcq7Da-u8EKbBTm_2n-efLuwJvX7OR3pU_7X0hK7Qqfi8DSOL63AMj72ctv3b5piUubzYW3lSFDb3Y6gbcfJQIzSQKA/s320/Vets+4.png" width="320" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) is the only national Vietnam Veterans organization congressionally chartered and exclusively dedicated to Vietnam-era veterans and their families.<br />
By the late 1970s, there was as yet no legislation to address the needs of this particular segment of the Veteran’s population. In January 1978, a small group of Vietnam veteran activists came to Washington, D.C., to rally support for creating an advocacy organization devoted exclusively to the needs of Vietnam veterans. VVA, initially known as the Council of Vietnam Veterans, began its work. At the end of its first year of operation in 1979, the total assets were $46,506.<br />
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Addressing Congress, council members hoped to gain political support for creating supportive policy and programs to meet the specific needs of Vietnam veterans and their families. However, despite persuasive arguments before Congress, they failed to win even a single legislative victory. It became apparent that social justice arguments made by a small group alone would not be sufficient. The U.S. Congress would respond to the legitimate needs of Vietnam veterans only if they had political strength. Following an intensive strategic membership drive, the Council of Vietnam Veterans by 1979, had transformed into the service organization Vietnam Veterans of America.</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwnp4urua6VhljVaNftbl_TiS5qhyiKkZVtchEdEFKDQM5gwLLe8SiMmZgckGGz8q8YOBnLSTy9P_3_8pHtuIRRrFvOUQ-t_KjAlD1kAPcTMowIrDNzjj-gQVOIzBxKhtEuiddiw93xBY/s1600/vets+5.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwnp4urua6VhljVaNftbl_TiS5qhyiKkZVtchEdEFKDQM5gwLLe8SiMmZgckGGz8q8YOBnLSTy9P_3_8pHtuIRRrFvOUQ-t_KjAlD1kAPcTMowIrDNzjj-gQVOIzBxKhtEuiddiw93xBY/s320/vets+5.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Building further upon its advocacy successes, in 1983, VVA founded its associate legal services department, the Vietnam Veterans of America Legal Services (VVALS) organization to broker on behalf of Vietnam veterans seeking benefits and services from the government. Over the next several years VVA grew in size, stature, and prestige. VVA's professional membership services, veterans service, and advocacy work gained the respect of Congress and the veterans community. In 1986, VVA's exemplary work was granted a congressional charter, formalizing its legitimacy.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQm-Nv-mOOicyUqWSBymcJS1c1Bj8vGib68_3_G50rrQaQJecV61iyTsHEMsCzOUA42gPacTYSqbd-FMmsImKsToqtmabivrrNxEr_vEObrKmpfWsMHN2Fyzq374PM17uZuhRBnokynbw/s1600/vets+7.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span style="font-size: large;">VVA’s mission is to promote the educational, economic, health, cultural, and emotional readjustment of the Vietnam-era veteran to civilian life. Relative to these goals, the organization’s practice skills are directed toward three realms: lobbying, mobilizing constituents, and engaging media support to realize its agenda. Legislative victories establishing the Vet Center system, passage of laws providing for increased job-training and job-placement assistance for unemployed and underemployed Vietnam-era veterans, laws assisting veterans suffering from Agent Orange exposure, and landmark legislation (i.e., Judicial Review of veterans claims) permitting veterans to challenge adverse VA decisions in court. All were enacted largely as a result of VVA's legislative efforts. Though much has been done, there is still so far to go to address the unmet needs of this population.<br />
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<b>Comprehensive review of the literature about Vietnam Veterans and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Substance Use Disorder</b><br />
</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZaZIhO4x294ylgSJfq1LCkUvoUNgBWs64CVKSblESkYU1dYpBgfu7fLGuJ649PltwLS4NLpO1oODBI189nDZIGj9K4wrNhSplGUgCRLv92Bsz_hOav9JYtUuLuyMMaCkSXD_xd1XZBNs/s1600/vets+6.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZaZIhO4x294ylgSJfq1LCkUvoUNgBWs64CVKSblESkYU1dYpBgfu7fLGuJ649PltwLS4NLpO1oODBI189nDZIGj9K4wrNhSplGUgCRLv92Bsz_hOav9JYtUuLuyMMaCkSXD_xd1XZBNs/s320/vets+6.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Vietnam War recalls the controversial treatment of veterans when they returned home, and the abuse encountered upon arrival only added to the already damaged psyches of many of the vets. “Only the veterans of Vietnam have endured a concerted, organized, psychological attack by their own people” (Grossman, 1996, p. 280). This was the first time since the advent of televised media, that coverage of a war would inflame such a virulent public response. After the war subsided, eventually, the problems veterans were having post-deployment as they transitioned back to civilian life became self-evident. However, it was not until 1980 that the term Post traumatic Stress Disorder became the branding that would identify this specific cluster of symptoms as a formal diagnosis in the Diagnostic Statistics Manual. <br />
The DSM-IV-TR describes a traumatic stressor as “involving direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one’s physical integrity of another person; or learning about unexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of death or injury experienced by a family member or other close associate.” (American Psychiatric Association, 2002, p. 463). It must involve a response of “intense fear, helplessness, or horror” and the resulting symptoms are what characterizes PTSD. <br />
The consideration of PTSD as a new diagnosis did not occur until many years after the Vietnam War veterans had returned home and tried to bring attention to their issues. Even in 1980, there was still much to learn about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQm-Nv-mOOicyUqWSBymcJS1c1Bj8vGib68_3_G50rrQaQJecV61iyTsHEMsCzOUA42gPacTYSqbd-FMmsImKsToqtmabivrrNxEr_vEObrKmpfWsMHN2Fyzq374PM17uZuhRBnokynbw/s1600/vets+7.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQm-Nv-mOOicyUqWSBymcJS1c1Bj8vGib68_3_G50rrQaQJecV61iyTsHEMsCzOUA42gPacTYSqbd-FMmsImKsToqtmabivrrNxEr_vEObrKmpfWsMHN2Fyzq374PM17uZuhRBnokynbw/s320/vets+7.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">n May of 2001, a comparative study done by the Department of United States Veterans Affairs released data on the Socioeconomic Status of Veterans and on VA Program Usage. This study compared veterans and non-veteran counterparts on several measures of socioeconomic status.<br />
Conclusions drawn from this study show that there were several contributing risk factors at play for Vietnam Veterans who were later diagnosed with PTSD following their release from combat duty. These include socioeconomic disadvantage, low education level, unemployment status, and poverty level and substance use. Education level seemed to figure prominently in that veterans with lower levels of education had a greater risk for mental health problems following exposure to trauma. Low education attainment when coupled with drug and alcohol usage increase potential for post traumatic stress disorder among veterans exposed to combat trauma.<br />
When considering the before and after profile of a young man who was enlisted during the time of the Vietnam War era it is helpful to take into account these social ecological factors contributing to shaping the pathway to post traumatic stress disorder. This is supported by the research done on Vietnam Veteran’s relative to the onset of post traumatic stress. Soldiers who started using drugs during high school for recreational purposes would be most likely to continue engaging in the practice, however, under duress of active combat duty, the utility would shift from mere recreational usage to substance abuse in order to escape feelings associated with psychological distress associated with trauma. Therefore, they would likely become candidates for the progression of the disease and its later stage development into a state of disorder. At the time of this study, in the year 2001, those who were age 54 years of age at the time, would now be 64, well within the age range of those who had served. Upon release from the service, unaware of the progressive and debilitating nature of substance abuse on all the organisms health systems and sub systems, it is unlikely that those who returned to normal lives as civilians gave up the practice of use of substances to numb psychological pain. Discharged, addicted, and traumatized, their continued use only served to reinforced the advance toward disorder. </span><br />
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</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwyNMdXWEQYFh6TO0AtUaNEwqP8S3yJKzgs8YtY5myJEMOL4f35qmj-KiuQwP-NnoUwXJsxhYRalALMLCJi8AgYAAuMzU76mkQ4FAyacREKdniclFwHFBgoT09m6C7v1UuHlFYvbM2-p4/s1600/vets+8.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwyNMdXWEQYFh6TO0AtUaNEwqP8S3yJKzgs8YtY5myJEMOL4f35qmj-KiuQwP-NnoUwXJsxhYRalALMLCJi8AgYAAuMzU76mkQ4FAyacREKdniclFwHFBgoT09m6C7v1UuHlFYvbM2-p4/s320/vets+8.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The impact of military service on long-term health is reemerging as a vital policy question, particularly as the United States conducts concurrently several major military operations. Health professionals, based on findings of years of ongoing research projects specifically aimed at Vietnam Veterans note that significant numbers of retired military personnel representative of this era are experiencing problems that are detrimental to both their psychological and physical health. <br />
Substance abuse has become, among others, the primary coping mechanism for Vietnam Veterans who suffer from unresolved Post Traumatic Stress relative to commonly co-occurring diseases. For example, in one of the early papers in this literature, Card (1987) finds that Vietnam Veterans are much more likely to report problems associated with post traumatic stress disorder including ‘‘nightmares, loss of control of behavior, emotional numbing, withdrawal from the external environment, hyper-vigilance, anxiety, and depression.’’ Later, Jordan et al. confirm this finding (1991), further documenting that “exposure to combat in Vietnam is associated with higher prevalence of specific psychiatric disorders, including post traumatic stress disorder”. Dobkin and Shabini present evidence of a strong link between post traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse (The Health Effect of Military Service: Evidence for the Vietnam Draft, 2007) In “Vietnam Combat Veterans: Treatment Problems, Strategies and Recommendations, by J. Michael Murray, MS, and Tom Williams, PsychD, the authors, who are themselves Vietnam veterans have interviewed or treated more than 2,000 combat veterans and their families and have found that 80% of the veterans seen have had alcohol related problems, further supporting the evidence presented by others, that these disorders are often correlated. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE9o2ufrvL_gHx27ns-QjwIpl-7yxMQ9e2qd9bqX5FbLgAza5AWmJuThJ8UO52vGHl4qnTauUnRf363zgPxP0p4qGsyXD0SEqGJE-0lVkwp4gHu4L6IbHiN9a9LHBLip1Jjbu7RthQDZY/s1600/vets+9.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE9o2ufrvL_gHx27ns-QjwIpl-7yxMQ9e2qd9bqX5FbLgAza5AWmJuThJ8UO52vGHl4qnTauUnRf363zgPxP0p4qGsyXD0SEqGJE-0lVkwp4gHu4L6IbHiN9a9LHBLip1Jjbu7RthQDZY/s320/vets+9.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The topic of Trauma, PTSD, and substance abuse are co-related according to the article titled ‘Post-traumatic stress disorder, drug dependence and suicidality among male Vietnam veterans with a history of heavy drug use” (2008). According to this article, generally speaking, PTSD and substance abuse problems are often diagnosed together. <br />
In the general population, up to three quarters of those who have survived violent trauma report substance abuse problems. Comparatively, 60-80% of Vietnam Veterans need of treatment for co-related diseases of PTSD substance abuse. Veterans over the age of 60 with PTSD are at higher risk for a suicide attempt where substance abuse and dependency problems co-exist with depression. The significance of these findings are such that they indicate practical and clinical implications not only for the well-being of the veterans themselves, but for family members and the health care system at large.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBelMCdnT4PBcmJl8Ut2fXHfDactGaRweklTYb99m6e5dHxTKhglXQu06YzmRBnClsv-zq719843cS50hom19ZLpzwa04SwZy6sidOXXp-VVHRnCYJq3IKBZAf7VDC9ySvQ9hXGKgLPvU/s1600/vets+10.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBelMCdnT4PBcmJl8Ut2fXHfDactGaRweklTYb99m6e5dHxTKhglXQu06YzmRBnClsv-zq719843cS50hom19ZLpzwa04SwZy6sidOXXp-VVHRnCYJq3IKBZAf7VDC9ySvQ9hXGKgLPvU/s320/vets+10.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Practical Implications: different types of trauma result in the syndrome of PTSD, and the disease will manifest itself uniquely for each individual, since each individual has unique endogenous and exongenous variables impacting his circumstances. This implies that there is no single solution for treatment, and assessments will require interventions that often extend beyond the ken of a single discipline’s scope of field. Those in the mental health and medical services delivery field who will come in contact with these individuals will need to apply a psychological diagnostic skill set that incorporates a combination of substance abuse and recovery therapy, direct counseling services, group work, and family counseling, in addition to medical interventive techniques.<br />
Clinical Implications: The burden on the health care system is even larger when comorbid substance abuse exists (Virgo et al., 1999; Piette et al, 1997). Patients with both PTSD and SUD (substance use disorder) have a more severe clinical profile than those with either disorder alone The challenges across medical and psychological disciplines will require purposeful planning and building of therapeutic alliances that serve the intersecting health needs of this population. Practitioners in the Behavioral, Neurobiological, Medical disciplines must be integrated simultaneously to counter previously held assumptions that beginning trauma therapy before reduction or elimination of substance use will lead to an increase in substance use. This has not been found to be the case at all. (Towards Integrated Treatments for PTSD and Substance Use Disorders, Suzy B. Gulliver, PhD (Director, Center of Excellence for research on Returning War Veterans, Waco TX ) and Laura E. Stoffen, BA. </span><br />
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</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx4Ew49fOTA9YqUvG_DLWuJm_K5AFp5yPXwlg4aHEIhcOH7KYS5AtSL3IIaC2i8b9clm6q-16h0ppvn71JeU7Fb4TJhGFmrEsL-5nb6r8FHhYHUAIu9eiWV8HdUziuItPphWWGDz3ApGc/s1600/vets+11.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx4Ew49fOTA9YqUvG_DLWuJm_K5AFp5yPXwlg4aHEIhcOH7KYS5AtSL3IIaC2i8b9clm6q-16h0ppvn71JeU7Fb4TJhGFmrEsL-5nb6r8FHhYHUAIu9eiWV8HdUziuItPphWWGDz3ApGc/s400/vets+11.png" width="400" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">..........Social Workers have done much to support the needs of this population, however, much more can be done to help this population become a more visible and viable segment of the local community. By treating the community itself as a target system, Social Workers can team with other community social organizations and mental health and medical service professionals to advocate on behalf of Vietnam Veterans by creating community outreach programs to raise awareness and educate the community about the plight of the population.These advocacy groups could identify gaps in services/resources and put into effect systems changes that are responsive to veterans’ changing needs.<br />
Efforts at inclusivity include; inviting local Vietnam Vets organizations to participate in community picnics and parades, by hosting community events such as bingo’s, spaghetti dinners and fish fry’s, teaming them with local Boy Scout organizations in order to provide role models and good PR for future military involvement; this and similar activities will help this population establish a niche as a visible and important presence in the community.<br />
By breaking down the invisible curtain that separates this population behind a veil of mystique, social workers can help mediate the process of mainstreaming the population into the larger culture.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">References</span></b></div><ul><li><span style="font-size: large;"> Post-traumatic stress disorder, drug dependence, and suicidality among male Vietnam veterans with a history of heavy drug use, Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence 76S S31–S43. Rumi Kato Price et al. © 2004 </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Substance Abuse in Vietnam Combat Veterans: Treatment Problems, Strategies and Recommendations. Journal of Subsrance Abuse Treatment. Vol. I, pp. 87-97.19. J. Michael Jenlinek, MS,Tom Williams, PsyD ©1984</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> Civilian Social Work: Serving the Military and Veteran Populations, Savinsky et al, 2009.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> Websites Referenced:</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> United States Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD: http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/pages/ptsd-alcohol-use.asp</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> Substance Abuse and Mental Heal Services Administration (SAMHSA)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> http://www.samhsa.gov/MilitaryFamilies/</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/aging/chap9.htm: Utilization of Veterans' Health Services for Substance Abuse: A Study of Aging Baby Boomer Veterans Brenda M. Booth,* Ph.D.,</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> Frederic C. Blow, Ph.D.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k7/veteransDual/veteransDual.htm</span></li>
</ul>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-19363422668431340622011-03-28T17:39:00.000-07:002011-05-01T19:16:38.833-07:00Adolescent African American Males at Risk for Incarceration<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCjZJsee3jbqknjdPR2Uu54bBSr3_KUbSl8_NBKadIMprk2Q9mfMJhDXjZ3zwAKYLOdM0XXhYQDSQw6jFOANtjMfVJ1cvV3xXhQg9pWqwwTVUkNGC6AXrnF68Ss7kVB8KuVE5bMtbW2u4/s1600/graph+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhwNWkJlc9aDLI8wKBexRdePWHanOn__GDfzZu8ytuvWrkYS1yViEDvoBdJ0N0im-nm0Zm8BEe96_X1abNpcuMN56Ze7Viq0ZORjOxkIdB8GLnF40dp-k2wcE75C2S9Q1ZEIOLYrv3Gb4/s1600/AfAmFam-slides-Schulz1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhwNWkJlc9aDLI8wKBexRdePWHanOn__GDfzZu8ytuvWrkYS1yViEDvoBdJ0N0im-nm0Zm8BEe96_X1abNpcuMN56Ze7Viq0ZORjOxkIdB8GLnF40dp-k2wcE75C2S9Q1ZEIOLYrv3Gb4/s400/AfAmFam-slides-Schulz1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"> The charge to investigate how the underground economy and black male incarceration rates affect black males, their families, and the black community as a whole, has created an opportunity for enlightenment, specifically as it regards the factors that facilitate the circumstances under which this phenomenon occurs. <br />
Taking into account the barriers of access to opportunity experienced by black males in economic and educational realms it stands to reason that, failing normal avenues of access, an individual would fabricate, by any means available, the necessary pathway to survival. It should come as a shock to no one that when jobs are scarce, people turn to alternative forms of “employment”, asserting their own ingenuity in order to do whatever is necessary to ‘make ends meet’. Restricted from access to regular means of employment, black men in particular, in many cases, having been forced to accept the alternative, ultimately surrender to the only remaining option: a life of work that is “off the books”. <br />
Unfortunately the paucity of the situation did not begin with the inability to find a job. It began much sooner than that; it began with a breakdown somewhere in the educational system, a system rife with institutionalized racism, prejudice and discrimination. A system dominated by a perspective that underestimates the young black male student on all accounts. A system that ignores his potential contributions as inconsequential. A system that has failed him in the most important stage of his life, the one where, all things being equal, he would be given the necessary foundational tools ensuring his ability to compete in a legitimate marketplace. <br />
Ill-equipped and without the proper and necessary tools, he becomes bored, and shiftless, turns to recreational drug use, which further dulls his ambitions and destroys his dreams. When he does engage himself in the act of labor, it is often in an underground economy of some sort. He shovels snow, or mows lawns or runs errands for neighbors in order to acquire a bit of mad money to cover the cost of cigarettes, and maybe a little bit of marijuana. Eventually, he turns from smoking drugs, to selling drugs, from washing cars, to stealing cars; from working at CoGo’s to robbing CoGo’s, from dating women, to selling women. <br />
Young, school drop out, underage, his life is now set, and he is doomed to repeat the cycle of adjudication and incarceration. This is the portrait of the young black male who is featured in the study that I did as an attempt to develop a profile of young Black adolescent males who are at risk for becoming incarcerated in the Criminal Justice System in their adult lives. As part of this study, 15 young Black males who are currently adjudicated as delinquents in Allegheny County Court system were solicited to voluntarily participate in an interview regarding certain aspects and influences impacting their lives. This interview was designed to serve as a non-scientific ‘pre-test’ for predicting potential future incarceration statistics. The questions asked in the interview were classified as two types: Objective and Subjective. <br />
The Objective set were of two types: 'yes or no' type questions, and other questions that asked about relationship dynamics. For example, they were asked about the expectations that were placed on them by their guardians, and they were asked what were the values that their family systems held dear. They were also asked their opinions about the importance of education and they were given the opportunity to rate the value of education on a 1 to 10 scale. They were asked to specify the behaviors that led to their adjudication and detention. They were asked about their drug use, sexual activity, parenthood status, and they were asked if they had relatives or friends who had been or who currently are incarcerated. The answers were assigned +/- values, and the scores were tallied to project which dynamic would likely have greater influence on their future life's course, if nothing happened to intervene and cause them to change direction. <br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Question Set #1 (Objective type)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ijLlM8gSd8EHHtkDhVR3bVZpIjlWsUmqKXYwkH7b0eePKiQCv3kvnrJhx8Oe_6qcv_7sSrriqK0koLOfLb03u-i5OnmKr6IWBTgTpreW9cJ6ga_Qx3Sy_0o5XBqgfxPfwyDNnTMk0nA/s1600/AfAmFam-slides-Schulz2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ijLlM8gSd8EHHtkDhVR3bVZpIjlWsUmqKXYwkH7b0eePKiQCv3kvnrJhx8Oe_6qcv_7sSrriqK0koLOfLb03u-i5OnmKr6IWBTgTpreW9cJ6ga_Qx3Sy_0o5XBqgfxPfwyDNnTMk0nA/s400/AfAmFam-slides-Schulz2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Q2 2. How do you get along with those you reside with?<br />
Q5 5. Do you have contact w/ parents?<br />
Q6 6. Relationship w/ mother?<br />
Q7 7. Relationship w/ father?<br />
Q8 8. Relationship w/ authority ?<br />
Q9 9. Family members involved w/legal system? <br />
Q10 10. Friends involved w/ legal system?<br />
Q11 11. Family members incarcerated<br />
Q12 12. Victim of abuse?<br />
Q15 15. On Welfare?<br />
Q16 16. Charged with crime?<br />
Q17 17. Ever shot anyone?<br />
Q19 19. Family currently involved with CYS?<br />
Q22 22. Suspended or expelled?<br />
Q23 23. Diagnosed special needs? <br />
Q25 25. Runaway from home?<br />
Q26 26. Do you smoke?<br />
Q27 27. Used drugs or alcohol?<br />
Q28 28. Sexually active?<br />
Q29 29. Tattoos or piercings?<br />
Q30 30. Fathered any children?<br />
Q31 31. Have you ever been hospitalized in a mental health facility?<br />
Q32 32. Ever been diagnosed w/ depression? <br />
Q33 33. Do you take medication to control behavior?<br />
Q14 14. Own or rent? <br />
Q18 18. How old at first contact w/ legal system?<br />
Q20 20. How old are you?<br />
Q21 21. Grade placement<br />
Q24 24. Currently employed?<br />
Q34 34. On a 1 to 10 scale, rate education<br />
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The graphic chart figure 1, reflects aggregate data collected on these questions. The bars in the positive range represent the number of positive values assessed, and the bars in the negative range represent the number of negative values assessed for each question in the Objective Set. (R1 + = the positive values reported for Respondent 1. R1 - = the negative values reported for Respondent 1, and etcetera). By looking at this information, one may ascertain the dominant dynamic forces influencing the individual’s life, either positive or negative, and thus recognize them as strong risk factors for predicting probability of increased risk in the future. </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDsU1iQjGam8j6b9MCRhbQRx9A8Y9siBzIffISXny1p3pzsEftvzM233WD7bbhhcL97LpMAVUFLGi1XgURpTtnjD7nMf1-VJGvSz47XsS0vKtu_WTq-DoRdsdXfFj9fG2qo3fi9Cu6BHA/s1600/AfAmFam-slides-Schulz3.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDsU1iQjGam8j6b9MCRhbQRx9A8Y9siBzIffISXny1p3pzsEftvzM233WD7bbhhcL97LpMAVUFLGi1XgURpTtnjD7nMf1-VJGvSz47XsS0vKtu_WTq-DoRdsdXfFj9fG2qo3fi9Cu6BHA/s400/AfAmFam-slides-Schulz3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(fig. 1)</span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCjZJsee3jbqknjdPR2Uu54bBSr3_KUbSl8_NBKadIMprk2Q9mfMJhDXjZ3zwAKYLOdM0XXhYQDSQw6jFOANtjMfVJ1cvV3xXhQg9pWqwwTVUkNGC6AXrnF68Ss7kVB8KuVE5bMtbW2u4/s1600/graph+2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The other set of questions were more informational and subjective. These asked about their age and level of education, their goals for the future, and the perceived barriers to meeting them. Each question on the list was assigned either a neutral, positive or negative value for use in assessing the overall environmental and peripheral dynamics impacting on the formation of the young man's character. Positive influences were assumed to identify tendencies leading to functional behaviors, and negative or indifferent influences were assumed to identify influences that may possibly contribute to maladaptive social pathologies. </span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Question Set #2 (Subjective and Informational)</span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUQ2OrlQ_aQK4rX0ZYAALMylzluNUxKiMGO2XcsUzGIQetu_kVq2e-W0DKsl7ordgvqAJuWz3jUo7aKEdaB_H5raE8_tRfsulTvaWvuJdTyqtdd3Tj29EkfUHWxWGAnbZapr-bsJ6Ls5o/s1600/AfAmFam-slides-Schulz4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUQ2OrlQ_aQK4rX0ZYAALMylzluNUxKiMGO2XcsUzGIQetu_kVq2e-W0DKsl7ordgvqAJuWz3jUo7aKEdaB_H5raE8_tRfsulTvaWvuJdTyqtdd3Tj29EkfUHWxWGAnbZapr-bsJ6Ls5o/s400/AfAmFam-slides-Schulz4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
I feel it important to share the answers to these specific questions because they are pertinent to the subject matter, particularly regarding the types of household configurations of Black American Families, and because of the values, hopes and aspirations of this ethnicity.<br />
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The choice of questions that would be included in the interview emerged from the concepts studied in our course content that served to illuminate the risks and resiliencies of the Black American Family. Certain questions were designed to reflect attributes that are historically characteristic of the Black American Family experience. For instance, the interviewees were asked to disclose their family structure. Their descriptions reflect those structures exemplified in the Billingsley text (Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, Chapter One).</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Q1 List the people in your household</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;">R1 6 mom, 2 brothers, sister, cousin; another sister lives in Phila w/ father<br />
R2 4 mom, father, sister<br />
R3 3 grandmother, father<br />
R4 4 mom, stepfather, brother<br />
R5 3 mom, stepfather<br />
R6 2 mom<br />
R7 2 mom<br />
R8 7 mom, stepfather, sister, brother, 2 cousins<br />
R9 3 grandmother (legal guardian since birth), aunt<br />
R10 10 mom, stepfather , 2 brothers, 3 sisters, stepbrother, stepsister<br />
R11 3 mom, brother<br />
R12 6 mom, 2 brothers, 2 sisters<br />
R13 5 mom, 3 sisters (live in shelter)<br />
R14 4 mom, father, brother<br />
R15 2 mom<br />
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In the text, Billingsley lists four major structures of African American Family Types: 1. Married Couple with no children, 2. Married Couple with children, 3. Unmarried mother with children, and 4. Unmarried father with children. The majority of those reported by the respondents fall into categories 2 and 3, with almost half falling into category 3. In Table I.3 on page 33-34 of the text, the author breaks down the family configurations into sub-types which he labels “Modified Nuclear” with alternative headship: 1. Natural Parent (Divorced, separated, widowed, never married parent) 2. Surrogate parent (lone adult raising grandchildren, nieces, nephews, foster children), 3. Natural Surrogate parent (Divorced, separated, widowed, never-married parents raising his/her own children, their cousins, or foster children). These conglomerates support the reports that African American Family patterns in less advantaged situations, have shifted from predominantly nuclear family types to those that form bonds based mainly on kinship through blood lines. Driven by the external pressures threatening the their stability, these families form mini-communities of mutual support, binding together to share resources and fill needs as social and economic conditions work against their favor. The values underlying these types of bonds seem to be lacking where delinquent behavior factors heavily in the equation. While 9 respondents reported no sense of important family values, 6 reported values such as mutual respect, honesty, trust and loyalty as being important. In cases where values are not identified, modeled, expected or instilled, risk for maladjusted behavior appears more prevalent. One wonders where is the breakdown of values transmission? Is it in lack of communication and cohesion and shared sense of identity between members? Is it lack of accountability or emotional/psychological disinvestment in functional familial roles? Does this lead to detachment and disenfranchisement from behaviors that otherwise belie the tendency to positive, cooperative social adjustment? </span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Q4 What are your important family values?</span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
R1 0 0<br />
R2 1 mutual respect<br />
R3 0 don't know<br />
R4 2 respect, protect each other<br />
R5 1 we just take care of ourselves<br />
R6 1 honesty<br />
R7 1 doing things for each other<br />
R8 0 don't know<br />
R9 0 don't know<br />
R10 2 trust, loyalty<br />
R11 0 don't know<br />
R12 0 no answer<br />
R13 0 none<br />
R14 0 no response<br />
R15 0 don't know<br />
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In spite of a majority lack of shared values, the respondents report that work ethic is a strong component of the families in question. Each of the respondents reported an expectation placed upon them by their family guardians (though in some cases they were ignored, which speaks more about the character of the individual delinquent behavior).</span><br />
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</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Q3 What are the expectations they have of you?</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;">R1 3 Sweeping, dishes, trash, clean room<br />
R2 3 trash, clean room, home for dinner<br />
R3 2 go to school, find a job<br />
R4 3 house rules, chores, curfew, cleaning<br />
R5 0 none<br />
R6 3 chores; court requires curfew, but mom does not enforce it<br />
R7 3 clean room, dishes, trash<br />
R8 2 chores, curfew<br />
R9 1 chores<br />
R10 3 curfew, trash, help w/ younger kids<br />
R11 2 curfew( ignores it), chores<br />
R12 2 curfew, chores<br />
R13 1 used to do chores before living in shelter <br />
R14 3 curfew, dishes, clean room<br />
R15 1 chores<br />
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Regarding the parental work ethic (which would be the strongest indicator of a positive influential modeling) all heads of household were employed except two. In cases of two parent households, both were employed, which again, displays the strong work ethic (even though additionally there were reported cases of access to welfare programs to supplement basic needs).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Q13 Who employed in the home?</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;">R1 1 mom<br />
R2 2 mom, dad<br />
R3 1 dad<br />
R4 2 mom, stepdad<br />
R5 2 mom, stepfather<br />
R6 2 mom<br />
R7 1 mom<br />
R8 2 mom, stepfather<br />
R9 1 aunt<br />
R10 1 stepfather<br />
R11 no one<br />
R13 2 mom, brother<br />
R14 no one<br />
R15 2 mom, dad<br />
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Other questions which reflected the hopes and dreams for the future:<br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Q35 What are your goals for the future?</span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
R1 go home, get into school, get a job<br />
R2 get a job to provide for daughter<br />
R3 just be left alone<br />
R4 earn a diploma; get a job with something creative or artistic<br />
R5 i have other stuff to deal with that's just as important as a diploma like staying off drugs<br />
R6 food service work, finish school<br />
R7 army<br />
R8 get a degree, work in a trade<br />
R9 get out<br />
R10 get a job, help mom, his girlfriend and child<br />
R11 graduate, get a job, join the military<br />
R12 graduate, get a job<br />
R13 go home<br />
R14 graduate, get a job<br />
R15 go home<br />
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Questions about impediments to realizing their dreams for the future:</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Q36 Barriers from realizing goals?</span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
R1 transportation, clothes<br />
R2 clothing, interview skills, transportation<br />
R3 being locked up; family don't like my decisions<br />
R4 money<br />
R5 none<br />
R6 being in placement, eager to get out<br />
R7 being locked up; money for school<br />
R8 none<br />
R9 none<br />
R10 none<br />
R11 probation<br />
R12 being locked up, no family w/ money or education that can help<br />
R13 none<br />
R14 none<br />
R15 probation<br />
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In conclusion, this experiment was an attempt to show the relationship between delinquency and crime. The risk factors influencing the likelihood for a young black male adolescent’s future incarceration have obvious implications. The risk of incarceration grows among those suffering least access to education, wages and opportunity. Low education begets low wages, which begets low opportunity and this leads to the inability to fund the cost of basic living standards. As a result these men turn to crime, make contact with the underground economy, which eventually takes over their lives. Without a strong educational foundation as the basis for building upon positive opportunities, it is likely that the allure of the alternative offered in the underground economy will set up the individual for habitual involvement in socially unacceptable pursuits. The charge of the young black male is to face the fight that lies ahead of him: to rise up, confront and rebel against the institutional barriers that threaten ultimately to reduce or eliminate his ability to reach his fullest human potential. <br />
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</span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-10507002936005082942011-03-03T04:50:00.000-08:002011-03-04T03:45:59.784-08:00Cultural Colonization and the Politics of Gender<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
The New York times posted an article titled "David Reimer, 38, Subject of the John/Joan Case" on May 12, 2004, that revealed the hidden truth about the plight of a Canadian family who brought a set of twins, Bruce and Brian, into the world on August 22, 1965 only to have one of them unwittingly made a eunuch after a botched circumcision operation. The doctor who performed the operation was using a new cauterizing technique which unwittingly proceeded to burn off the entire organ. As a result of the mishap, Bruce Reimer became the first developmentally normal child to undergo a sex reassignment. And since he had been born an identical twin, the situation presented the perfect circumstances for monitoring the experiment with a built in matched control subject. <br />
Subsequently, since nothing could be done to undo the damage, and since reconstructive surgery was out of the question, the decision was made to remove his testicles. On the 'expert' advice of Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University, who was noted for his theories on sex and gender that stated infants are born psychosexually neutral, the Reimers decided to raise Bruce as if he had been born a biological female, and keep the real truth 'hush-hush'. They renamed Bruce "Brenda" and began to raise him as if he were a biological female. They dressed him in skirts and dresses, and gave him girl toys to play with, but none of that seemed to matter to 'Brenda" who wanted to have nothing to do with it, later rejecting all of the attempts to feminize Bruce into a well adjusted biological female. Medical teams monitored the situation very closely over a period of several years, injecting Bruce with female hormones, fabricating a synthetic vagina, using the skin flap left over from the scrotum after his testicles were removed. The plan was ultimately to create an inner cavity so that 'Brenda' would appear more like other girls, and thus with more realistic features, better identify as the psychologically well adjusted biological female they were all trying to convince him/her that s/he was.<br />
Aside from the obvious tragic consequences of such a medical catastrophe, what most strongly piques my interest in this story is the issue that arises regarding the politics of the binary gender construction, framed by the themes of cultural gender variance as found in the text "Gender Diversity" by Serena Nanda. In this text she compares and contrasts the gamut of gender expressions across several cultures and continents. The comparisons that seem to be most striking are those that are made between vertically structured societies and those that are not.<br />
For example, in terms of gender, the indigenous cultures of North America, such as Native American tribes the Mojave and the Navajo, affirmed couple pairings and gender expressions that were outside the typical dimorphic patterns of Eurocentric cultures, which normatively included only hetero-normative mated pair models. <br />
The Navajos had a term for those not hetero-normatively oriented. These were called Nadleeh, and the name was used to specify those who in early childhood exhibited an orientation toward those occupational interests of the opposite gender. Boys who showed a gravitation toward crafts and domestic duties were accepted as part of this class. The same is said of the females who exhibited proclivities for interest in what were ordinarily considered male orientated tasks, such as hunting. Nanda tells us that “these would adopt almost all aspects of the opposite gender's dress, work, language and behavior”. The Mojave, whose gender variant counterparts were called Alyha (male) and Hwaume ( female variant) went even further, and adopted the physiological traits and status of the opposite gender as well. Explorers, at their arrival on the continent and upon encountering what seemed to them to be behavioral abnormalities condemned these practices as taboo as indeed they are in Eurocentric cultures. They labeled them 'berdeche', a derogatory term derived from the Arabic, meaning 'male prostitute'. However, the indigenous peoples simply knew nothing of such comparisons, and therefore no context was prevalent in which such objections would arise. In the minds of the indigenous, these were as much a part of the gender status quo as are their correlates in gender binary cultures; they did not see themselves as 'variant' in any degree, but rather as 'two-spirited', simply another presentation of gender. The idea here is that of multiple persuasions, rather than variation, which implies deviation from a norm. <br />
As it stands, one of the major differences between these cultures and its Eurocentric counterpart, is the manner in which the Europeans conflate gender and sex. This seems to have arisen from the ideology surrounding the practicalities in division of labor tasks where early on females, being restricted to 'home and hearth' type activities during gestational periods, were better fit to exercise the role of caregiver, keeping them close to camp and better prepared to serve domestic needs. Males, on the other hand, lacking in maternal ties to their offspring, yielded to the responsibilities closely associated with protection, hunting and foraging for food, which required more flexible mobility.<br />
As the fledgling European culture in its earlier developmental phase reveled in its flourishing humanism, compelled by its tendency to formulate scientific systems of taxonomy, and with culture as captive audience, the values related to dimorphic coupling became reinforced, and ultimately enshrined as cultural code. Transmitted institutionally from generation to generation, morality ultimately galvanized a social propriety that expected adherence to behavioral practices endemic to the particular cultural ethic, an ethic based on Judeo-Christian values. Broadly speaking, these values were imported during the process of colonization when Europeans migrated to other continents, imposing upon its inhabitants a new set of foreign values intended to supplant those that had sprung from their own organically adaptive needs set. While projecting their institutionalized biases onto the cultural practices of the indigenous peoples, the Europeans condemned as heretical their purely natural and normative behaviors. As a result, European “repression and the growing assimilation of sex/gender ideologies” forced the disappearance of gender variant roles. <br />
So, by the time the twins Bruce and Brian were born, their society was well established in its rules regarding acceptable gender roles having been appropriated histrionically and transmitted generationally. It was very clear to the twins' parents what was expected. It was very clear to the twins' parents what was expected. A body without a penis had to have a vagina. There was no in between, because in the back and whiteness of pink and blue culture such standards are set to serve a larger purpose, that being those of the dominant prevailing ethnocentric power base. And ethnocentric values, thy name is 'capitalism', with its characteristic division of labor, which forces all of its subjects to chose from one of two optional roles to serve that end. And thus, the first question asked of a subject upon its arrival in the world is "what is it?". So when the Reimer family was given a medical prescription for how to solve the dilemma forced upon them by this twist of fate, they jumped at the only chance they had to ensure what was promised to be the best solution for ensuring Bruce's psychological and social adjustment.<br />
The problem is, Bruce never succeeded in adjusting to the course imposed for him. Internally, his own innate genetic make up would fight all therapeutic attempts to make him out to be what was inherently against his biological nature. Externally, he would resist his family's attempts to socialize him as a biological female. The doctors tried to force him/her to have the surgery to complete his feminization but he resisted emphatically. He both felt and lived with the conflict churning inside, knowing intuitively that something was not right. Against their protestations, he wanted to rough house; he wanted to shave like his father; he dreamed of fixing cars. By the time he reached adolescence, in a moment of sheer stress and frustration, his father blurted out the truth, that he was not a girl; that he had been born biologically male, and revealed what happened during the circumcision. <br />
Most disconcerting about the case of Bruce and his twin brother Brian (his entire family actually), is that having to live with such conflict destroyed their lives, much in the same manner that colonization, by forcing suppression, obliterated the perceived anomalies of gender variant cultures. The infamous Dr. Money, supported by the institutions that he represented, colonized the Reimers to adjust to the prevailing ideas stemming from ideologies that endorsed dimorphic classification. A similar process happened in India with the Hijra and Sadin; it happened in Thailand with its Kathoey, and in the Philippines with its Bakla, Bantu and Bayot, transforming through assimilation cultures that at one point functioned efficiently within the frame of egalitarian and horizontal structure. Understandably, those cultures untouched by the enforced vagaries of capitalism seemed most prone to maintaining a consistent homeostasis. Not having to strive continuously to strike a balance on the fickle teeter-totter of market ambiguity, these cultures lived the best of both worlds as they strove to satisfy the most basic needs and desires of the human spirit relative to the objectives for meeting the needs of both the individual and the larger cultural community.<br />
As the world continues to evolve as a global culture, one can only wonder what inventions power mongers will create to further control, manipulate and exploit human capital to serve its own gains.....one can only wonder.<br />
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/reimer/<br />
</span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-80025069385502597272011-01-23T12:38:00.000-08:002011-01-23T12:38:48.686-08:00Where I stand on issues regarding same-sex relationships and the biological validity of their existence<span style="font-size: large;"> Human Pair-Bonding and Mated Relationships In Cultures Popular and Traditional</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> In the cultural conflict of family values, we need all the levity we can get to raise our spirits and inflate our hope that times are not as bad as some naysayers predict. As a means to that end, mockumentary style situational comedies provide a much needed remedy in the form of comic relief, as they comment on contemporary social themes relative to all our lives.<photo 1=""></photo></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> "Sitcoms" that seem to remain most in vogue across the television time-line continuum are those that focus on relationships, and those that seem most appealing are those that lampoon family relationships in particular. If we look closely enough, and are not too proud to admit it, each of us can see a lot or little bit of our own idiosyncrasies in the foibles of the characters displayed. It's comforting to know, when the world fails to recognize the beauty in our own flawed character, that at least we are not really alone. If we can laugh with them, the sting of others' laughter directed our way is softened.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> For the most part, TV show families, in episodic vignettes, portray value dilemmas that we all face, such that typify normal social transactions and interactions of day to day living. One show in particular, Modern Family, challenges traditional taboos of divorce, interracial coupling, and gay mated couple configurations. It calls into question how marriage, the traditional institution that ritualizes and formalizes dimorphic coupling, is currently transitioning to include and recognize other types of pair-bonded relationships as equally valid forms of human being.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> The show itself is about three branches of a single family tree and their multigenerational experiences as related through kinship bonds. While the families featured in the sitcom represent what is understood as the typical nuclear family model, the couple-bonds heading the families themselves are atypical to those normatively found in American culture, and certainly are not structures that are championed as representative of conservative mainstream American values. They in fact include a divorced/remarried, interracial/intergenerational couples and a gay male couple with an adopted Vietnamese child. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Historically, each culture in every place and era, has had its own set of both expectations and taboos around certain acceptable pair-bonding forms, and many persist even today. Pasternack et al (Sex, Gender and Kinship pg. 77) provide reasoning that "scholars assume that where customs, traits and institutions are universal across cultures, there is a clear adaptive advantage for doing so". Several theories are used to explain why stable dimorphic-specific mated relationships have evolved into a universal characteristic of the human species. While each theory does not apply universally to all forms of pair-bonding, there are certain characteristics that apply within the specter of diverse mated relationship forms, including those featured in the show 'Modern Family'.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> According to one such theory, the adaptive advantage "solves the problem presented by gender division of labor" (Sex, Gender and Kinship pg. 78) such as getting food and other economic advantages. This definitely applies to the mated relationships in human primates where the female tends to defer to tasks centered around nurturing needs of the offspring, while the male provides for economic and protective needs of the female and their brood. In the show "Modern Family", we find an hilarious reversal of traditional gender roles, as its writers go to great lengths to portray situations in which the characters take responsibility for tending to tasks not traditionally assigned to their specific gender class. For instance, in one scene Jay and and his son-in-law Phil are assigned to take their sons out to the mall to purchase Halloween costumes. The experience of men shopping and dealing with transactions outside their normal social strata, is quite entertaining. Presenting yet another perspective, the writers of the show create a scene that shows how Cam and Mitchell, Lily's gay adoptive parents, share equally in the tasks of child rearing, with neither assigned to fulfill one specific role or the other. In these relationships, the basic idea of 'gender division of labor' is supported, though perhaps not in the traditional sense.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Another theory presented by Pasternak et al, relative to behaviors observed in pair-bonding habits of other species, is the dependency theory (Sex, Gender and Kinship pg. 80). This theory is considered pertinent to the human species as well because according to it, pair-bonding accommodates the long gestation period of offspring dependency, thus requiring the assurance of the provision of food, shelter, and protection. The families presented in 'Modern Family' have children as well, and the children seem to be the glue that binds them together. Even in the relationship between Cam and Mitchell, that of its own accord could not biologically produce offspring, the essential criteria for provision of food, shelter, and protection is satisfied, thus confirming their relationship as a valid form of pair-bonding mated relationship. Their infant daughter Lily's needs are met as one of the pair functions as the 'stay-at-home' dad (proxy mom), while the other goes out to forage for food in order to provide economic stability for the family unit.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> But what of those who reject non-traditional mated relationships, argueing that they are unnatural (for moral or religious reasons), and as such they not be accepted as a valid proxy for traditional gender dimorphic arrangements? Morals are socially constructed, relative to adaptation under certain circumstances, and as such are not necessarily a part of this discussion. However, to address the question of why males and females share responsibilities in some cases but not in others, etiologists (Pasternack et al, Sex, Gender and Kinship pg. 80) answer that question by investigating another: “Why can females in some species do without males”? </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> According to Melvin Embers, a contributor to the book ‘Sex, Gender and Kinship’. the interference theory accounts for the fact that without the division of labor exhibited in the distribution of gender specific tasks, nonhuman primate mothers would have to be away from their offspring while foraging for food, leaving their infants vulnerable to predators. Thus, “natural selection would favor male-female pair-bonding if the mother’s feeding requirements interfere with her baby tending”. Embers found this hypothesis to be supported among birds and mammal species. This is relevant to human dimorphic pair-bonding, the assumption being that human mothers need help to manage all the tasks neccessary to ensure her survival and that of her offspring. But why, posits Embers, would this eliminate the option of female-female pair-bonding? A female partner could just as easily replace the male in a relationship like this, by taking turns in tending to the needs of the brood, while the other went out to forage for food. However, the problem encountered in this arrangement, would be that there may be occasions when both mother might simultaneously have a set of offspring, and neither would be able to leave the offspring and tend to the task of providing food. So that eliminates the potential reasoning for same-sex pair bonding between females. In defense of humans however, females are not the victims of biology that their earlier ancestors were, and are quite capable of dividing labor while planning to avoid overlapping gestational circumstances, if they so choose.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Human pair-bonding tendencies have been formalized through ritual and ceremony into a cultural phenomenon known as ‘marriage’. George Murdoch’s classic definition of marriage is “Marriage exists only when economic and sexual functions are united into one relationship” encompasses an inclusive range of broad relationship configurations that appear in the kalidescopic diversity of human culture. Male-female pair-bonding is not the only familial configuration that has prevailed across cultures as evidenced by anthropological and sociological scientists who have studied pair-bonding patterns for generations, including those that affirm the practice of polygyny (males with multiple wives), polyandry (female with multiple husbands -- among the Nayar’s of India’s Malibar coast [pg.83] ), female with female (Nandi of Kenya[pg.83]). Even the Cheyenne have engaged in socially sanctioned male-male bonding mated relationships. There have even been situations in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong in the last 50 years, where ghost marriages occured. And while that may seem strange to some who do not share the values supporting that particular cultural experience, these various pair-bonding configurations must be recognized for their capacity to convert friendship to kinship thereby satisfying the beneficent charge lying at the root of all mated relationships: to establish potentially useful connections between families and to strengthen social ties that serve to unite rather than divide us in the systemic networks that constitute our human commonalities.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Families have traditionally consisted of a pair-bonded couple, each fulfilling an inherent need for economic and social security and comfort. Our disparate values may divide us, individually and culturally. But if we stop and reflect, our eyes may be open to the possibility that we are less different than we imagine; that we are more alike than we thought, especially in terms of the methods we choose to survive the vicissitudes of life. Once we’ve secured that position, then we are free to satisfy that gnawing inherent longing to achieve the often elusive and most precious human values of beauty, peace, hope, joy, happiness and, yes, even laughter and levity, which somehow makes it all worthwhile. </span><br />
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</span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-33398947836137268512011-01-10T15:55:00.000-08:002011-01-11T12:23:42.795-08:00Boys Will Be Girls ( Will Be Boys Will Be ….. etc)<style>
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</style> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Once upon a time in a land not so long and far away author and mother Cheryl Kilodavis wrote a book titled My Princess Boy: A Mom's Story About a Young Boy Who Loves to Dress Up. The book, which was inspired by her five-year old son Dyson's desire to dress as a princess, is now being used in schools as an gender diversity positive educational, anti-bullying tool.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">I first learned about the interview from a featured news story highlighted on the Advocates.com's online edition. “I'm a princess boy and I love wearing dresses, and I love the colors of pink and red...it makes me feel happy”, says five-year-old Dyson Kilodavis during an interview with Meredith Vieira on MSNBC's Today show in July of 2010.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">On the same topic, a separate interview by Vieira on MSNBC aired later in the year on November 8, featuring another young five year old boy, nicknamed “Boo”, who elected to chose the costume “Daphne” from the Scooby-Doo movie for his upcoming Halloween Kindergarten party. To protect the family's privacy Boo's mother Sarah has chosen not to reveal her surname, but, unabashed, she supports his choice. In response to the negative reactions she received from other mothers she replied, “If you think that me allowing my son to be a female character for Halloween is somehow going to make him “gay” then you are an idiot ….. I'm not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja, so back off.” Boo's mom outlines her personal dilemma as she comments: I'm torn between the fact that I don't want my children to be teased, but at the same time I don't want my children to feel that they always have to give in to what the world expects of them”. Further, she stated, “No matter what he turns out to be as a grown-up, if he's left handed, right handed, these things do not matter to me, because he is my son”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">After many thousands of years of binary gender role evolution and ascendancy, has the arc finally reached its apex? Is its tide finally turning to meet the crucial point where issues of social justice and equality intersect? Is the inevitable showdown between the two finally at hand?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">From the perspective of one such as myself who has struggled throughout 57+ years of life wrangling with the gender conformity issue, this certainly seems to be the case. Can you give me a Hallelujah!? I was born in September of 1953, into a cultural climate struggling with concurrent social concerns of race and emerging civil rights issues. While the focus was not yet on gender diversion, following the Civil Rights Movement, the topic of sexual orientation began to occupy the interests of the scientific community, and eventually in 1973 homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual as a mental disorder. Too late however, since the navy had already discharged me from the service for being gay.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Like those young boys, Dyson and Boo, I identify as biologically male. Likely, we share the commonality of transgender nature; me in the sense that I have no strong affiliation to either of the usual binary cultural choices, and them, in that they are too young as yet to have been fully indoctrinated in masculine culture. I too liked to dress up in girl things and play with girls toys, even prior to the stage of development where boys were 'normally' pressured to participate in more male appropriate activities. After a certain age, to express curiosity about the characteristics of the opposite sex was suspect. Indeed to go so far as to emulate their particular culture was anathema.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">In chapter One (The Animal With the Weirdest Sex Life) of his 1997 book The Evolution of Human Sexuality Dr. Jared Diamond compares various aspects of sexuality between species. In the chapter he states “Increasingly today, we consider it narrow-minded and despicably prejudiced to denigrate those who do not conform to our own standards.” And while not intentionally mixing sex and gender as metaphors, in the case of these two boys the statement could apply equally as well. True, at age five, they were not yet sexually developed as were the subjects of Dr. Diamond's research, however, his thesis that "human identification with sexual anatomy, physiology and behavior has diverged from our closest relative" is applicable to this particular situation. And, as Boo's mom Sarah attests, not only does it raise a lot of eyebrows; it raises a lot of objections as well.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Why does such an elevation of blood pressure accompany the mention of boys expressing interest in girl things? Even today, the culture war continues to bolster prevailing prejudicial attitudes regarding stereotypical expectations that boys gravitate toward masculine traits in the course of personal development, as it expects girls to gravitate toward feminine traits, in spite of the strides made along the lines of women's rights, particularly in the workforce. One would think we would have learned that lesson and moved on to issues of greater concern, such as poverty, domestic violence etc. Be that as it may, the idea 'Boys being boys and girls being girls' historically has come to be thought of as the 'natural' way for the species to develop. But according to whose perspective?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Emily Martin, author of “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles” apparently would agree that ideas about femininity and masculinity are entrenched in the manner biologists use language to construct imagery for describing the human reproductive process. The usual lexicon used to characterize masculinity insinuates an implication of power differential between masculine and feminine polarities, in like manner to other polarities such as darkness (evil) and light (good). In reproductive terms the male reproductive process (dominance) is evaluated positively, ie, in terms of its productivity (spermatogenesis). On the other hand, the female reproductive process (submission) is evaluated negatively in terms of its disintegration and necrosis (menstruation). The act itself implies that primary control of the process belongs to the male who, with pelvic thrusting initiatives, does the 'hard work' of 'penetration', while women behave as passive 'receptacle' for the 'transport' of the ejaculation of sperm. According to Martin, biological scientists are responsible for reinforcing perspectives which portray the entire reproductive act as being male dominant instead of characterizing it as the true process of mutuality that it is, with both participants equally responsible for the ultimate coital result.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The inclinations of both the scientific and academic communities to evaluate distinctions between male-female human Sexuality and Gender in terms of a binary model is being challenged as a cultural norm by groups that advocate to deconstruct the gender codes which have arisen over time through continuous articulation, reiteration and reinforcement of ideas that grew out of the concept of dualism inherent in the pair-bonding habits of our earlier relatives. From an evolutionary perspective it would seem to make good sense to acknowledge evidence supporting the facts that each individual organism exists as the result of reproduction, thus supporting the idea that the species needs males to be men, and females to be women in order to ensure that reproduction habits remain intact so that the species avoids extinction. However, reproduction has not always been, and does not necessarily occur only as a result of a pair bonding sexual experience. Even single cells of certain organisms reproduce themselves asexually without the participation of another individual of the same species. Plants also have the ability to reproduce asexually. So life, within the aegis of the proper environmental circumstances, reproduces, adapts and survives autonomically, without the interference and even in spite of well-intended biological engineers.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">That being the case, the tendency to impose a biased set of arbitrary constraints upon an individual's otherwise naturally occurring sexual/gender orientation, may interfere with the natural ecological intention of providential creativity. It's been said that it's not nice to fool with mother nature. When people argue in favor of the binary model, they usually do so out of blindness and ignorance as a result of inducement through cultural conditioning, their objections being raised within the narrow confines of their own liminal condition. In that regard, the human species across the globe revels in identification with binary perspective, and there it remains, stuck, enamored, ever peering like narcissus into the mirror of its own reflection. It has forgotten to remember that it was once one before it became two, and thus it remains caught up in the fairy tale myth of its own lingual narrative.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">As little girls synthesize the culturally based gender polarities and absorb into themselves the nature of boys, and as boys do the same, the resulting encoded genetics will rewrite the evolutionary script for the next generation. As this occurs the social DNA will evolve us (at least on the spiritual level) into a less dichotomous and thus more integrated species. Our generativity may then become less focused on the physical manifestations of our existence, and more in tune with who we are at the essential core; perhaps more angelic, like the innocent Princess Boys of the world, or better still, like we were when we were a single cell. Perhaps along the way we may learn to honor the innate tendencies, feelings, and inclinations of others; to allow them their uniqueness, without attempting to pathologize them by applying some theoretical context in which to justify biases hidden in one's personal subjectivity.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/40887103#40887103">MSNBC Weblink </a></span></span></div>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-91052598870745440512010-12-01T06:57:00.001-08:002010-12-01T06:58:33.368-08:00Meeting the Face of Homelessness at Jubilee Kitchen<span style="font-size: large;">When I first began helping out at <a href="http://jubileesoupkitchen.org/">Jubilee Kitchen</a> in September, I imported into the situation some ancient baggage regarding my attitudes about the value of people in general. Until my experience helping at Jubilee, I was unaware that I had been breezing along through life on shallow attitudes dictated by a culturally infused implicit value system that assigned value to people according to the quality and quantity of their possessions. I thought of myself as a rather 'nice', understanding and compassionate person, but soon realized how 'hobo-phobic' I truly was. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In becoming acquainted, albeit peripherally, with this special population of men, women and children at risk for a unique type of human suffering, I managed to get in touch with the denial I lived in regarding the impact of human impoverishment, and in doing so, managed, for first time, to recognize the reality and depth of my own impoverishment, vulnerability and suffering. That recognition enabled me to gain a greater understanding of our kinship as human people bound together by the inescapable fact of human misery. For no matter how much we separate ourselves into categories of 'have's 'and 'have not's', when all is said and done, we all share the same needs for food shelter and clothing, and we each bear personal responsibility for working to effect the economic transactions necessary to satisfy those needs. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our sociopolitical system seems intent on supporting the capacity for equal access to the means to accomplish this task. Yet it seems there are far too many factors that impede equal access to those opportunities, favoring those who enter life's race with an adequate (or better) foundation of support. Those who are born into families of rich economic, social, psychological, biological and cultural resources seem to face fewer barriers to having their most base needs met, and the structures that are in place, seem to reinforce their ability to multiply their assets at whim. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">On the other hand, those who have inherited impoverishment in any of the aforementioned domains struggle daily to survive. They do so, but just barely. They are the disenfranchised. The mentally disabled who are simply unable to function in accordance with the high demands of the marketplace; they are the veterans suffering from post traumatic stress, who have yielded to the allure of substance abuse, to suppress the pain of unbearable memories; they are the deserted mothers with children who invested their hopes in a relationship with a man only to have their emotional vulnerability and spiritual poverty exploited. They are the men who were released from prison, and whose measily pittance of a discharge grant only went 'so far' but not far enough to give them a leg up. They are the otherwise healthy: unemployed, the jobless, the fired, those whose unemployment benefits have expired. The litany of poverty continues as a common thread through every day, every year, every decade, and every century. And thankfully, good will organizations such as Jubilee Kitchen exist to meet the demands of this particular population at-risk. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Outside of the back room kitchen banter, I did not really have much opportunity, due to time constraints and the demands of the daily tasks, to familiarize myself personally with the broad specter of persons that make up the Jubillee community. Surprisingly, Jubilee does more for the homeless/hungry population than supply a daily meal. For about 6-8 hours each day it provides a place to 'be'; a roof and a respite from the elements. A place to 'hang out' and make social connection. It also provides a medical clinic, a job bank, bus tickets for those going to employment interviews, counseling, a shower for those who need it and it also has a daycare component. But most of all, it provides a bit of permanent hope for daily sustenance, and an opportunity to get their lives on track when they found those lives had fallen through the cracks and who have nowhere else to turn, since they have little to none financial resources for use to engage other more formal resource mechanisms. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I felt personally powerless to help, but I suppose I must be preparing for the right field if situations such as this invoke such an urge to help alleviate the suffering. Of course the issues of homelessness are so large and complex that it takes more than an empathetic individual to meet the challenges of this population. It takes an entire action system of dedicated professionals with access to resources, trained specifically to investigate the impediments that disempower, provide connection to resources and identify solutions that are not only curative, but those that are preventative as well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As long as our current sociopolitical system remains in place, the problem of homelessness will not go away. As long as the predominant ethic remains one of self-interest and striving to multiply one's currency, the 'have's' will continue to thrive and the 'have not's' will continue to struggle with little hope for a better future. For the most hopeless among us, Jubilee extends that promise of hope. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My experience with volunteering at Jubilee has given a much deeper awareness and understanding of the unique relationship between the giver and the receiver. At day's end, we're pretty much the same, and often each taking turns at one role or the other in the wonderfully intangible yet ecologically balanced charitable impulse. </span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-51597215554800007672010-11-15T05:37:00.000-08:002010-11-15T05:44:11.492-08:00Relationships, Attachment and Hostage Taking<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> I was originally attracted to the article in question because of its mention of the alluring taboo "Polyamory' in the title <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=polyamory-chic-gay-jealousy-and-the-2010-08-25">"Polyamory chic, gay jealousy and the evolution of a broken heart"</a>. The article itself reflected an interesting perspective, but the ideas that stirred my own subjectivity and elicited an impulse to comment were those where reference was made to the activity of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. <br />
Bio-Psychology deals with the formation of neural nets, and the interactivity of the nervous and endocrine system, and particularly how the neurons themselves transmit chemical information from one to the other, and how certain chemicals released across the synaptic gap activate the endocrine system to discharge hormones into the bloodstream and convey information that engages the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. <br />
In speaking about the 'protest stage' regarding the human heartbreak experience relative to human relationships, Mr. Bering states that in the wake of a break-up, "at the neurobiological level, the protest stage is characterized by unusually heightened, even frenetic activity of dopamine and norepinephrine receptors in the brain, which has the effect of pronounced alertness similar to what is found in young animals abandoned by their mothers". It seemed to make sense to me, in light of the work done on attachment by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and more recently Mary Main, that what might be at the bottom of post break-up suffering, are really unreconciled maladaptive attachment issues. <br />
If the child's Trust vs. Mistrust (Erikson) task had not been resolved, then it is likely that one or both of the players in a couple dyad may be using the relationship as the battleground to resolve their own attachment issues. Unbeknownst, the significant other may be surreptitiously cast as the surrogate parent of the one whose attachment bonds were never imprinted in a healthy, satisfying manner, and so they are carrying forward into all future relationships the only model available to them upon which to pattern subsequent relationships. <br />
So many emotions are elicited in the drama of relationship, each with its own accompanying brain neurochemical plasticity potential. Positive relational experiences patterned on a healthy model of early trust imprinting and bonding will tend to build neural connections that will activate and reinforce positive emotional states of well-being. On the other hand, brains that are building according to the effect of "pronounced alertness' hypervigilant and in continuous survival mode, may have more a tendency to develop Depression, lethargy, despondency and despair, as the continuous enslaught of those particular chemicals support a brain design network supporting maladaptive strategies for human engagement and relationship. <br />
In any event, the emotional structures that are built throughout our lives hinge upon the models provided in the earliest years of life by our primary caregiver. It would seem to make sense that unresolved issues in the earlier stages of human development would naturally be carried forward into subsequent stages. It does not matter that the mind is not in sync with the biological demands of each subsequent stage. The 'beat goes on' as they say and is most obvious as we experience a seemingly grown adult acting like a five year old throwing a temper tantrum when their emotional needs are not being met in an adult relationship. </span><br />
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Based on the article: Scientific American Mind magazine, research psychologist Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast August 25, 2010. Title: Polyamory chic, gay jealousy and the evolution of a broken heart By Jesse Bering<br />
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=polyamory-chic-gay-jealousy-and-the-2010-08-25Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-48866180346944616032010-11-13T07:48:00.000-08:002011-10-06T18:01:17.802-07:00Prayers for Bobby: An Analysis<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Prayers for Bobby: A Coming Out Story for a Son and A Coming of Age Story and His Mother</span></div>
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Prayers for Bobby is a true story based on the life of Bobby Griffith, a young man who from age 16 to 20 struggled with being gay while being raised in a devout upper middle-class Anglo-Saxon fundamentalist evangelical Christian family, before finally ending the struggle by allowing himself to fall off a bridge into the path of oncoming traffic, tragically ending his life in 1983. <br />
It was his family's and his community's religious intolerance that drove Bobby to take his own life, yet it was his mother Mary who redeemed his memory as she herself, through gay right's advocacy, came to grips with the effects of her own internalized bigotry in the wake of his death. After seeking solace and understanding from the local Metropolitan Community Church, ultimately she redeems both herself and her son's memory, eventually denying the religion that fueled his self-loathing, and coming to accept and acknowledge Bobby's orientation as a gift bestowed on him at conception. <br />
Bobby was a typical all-American boy who began to question his sexuality (according to records found in his journal) around the age of 14-15. This journal entry reveals how around the age of 18, he was ensconced in a terrible conflict between contrasting values of expected religious ethical behavior, and his own inner desires and longings:<br />
"What's wrong with me? I wish I could crawl under a rock. God, do you enjoy seeing me stumble around this world like a stupid idiot? I think you must. There's probably some kind of pill somewhere that would heal my brain or there's probably some kind of vitamin that I'm not getting enough of. -- Bobby's diary entry for Sept. 28 1981"<br />
Clearly, Bobby was caught in the tension of conflicting contrasts between psychic imprints of 'normalcy' , and the influence of local cultural values and customs imposed on him and his family. Unaware that these types of values are socially constructed, he and his family unquestioningly bought into the ideas that had been inculcated as part of their values system through frequent, repetitive religious and cultural reinforcement.<br />
As the matrix of Bobby's values system, his mother Mary provided the source material for his conflict. She herself had been raised in a religious environment in the 1950's, a period of time that thought suspiciously about homosexuality in general. The general attitude of the times condemned gay people as being sinful and destined for damnation. Bobby himself was born into the ascendency period of the Moral Majority's right wing evangelical movement's ideology which made the topic of homosexuality one of its more vocal targets of attack, thereby increasing the climate of hatred and bigotry around the topic of homosexuality in general. Bobby's mother had absorbed these ideas into her own value system, and imparted these negative attitudes to her own family, as they had been imparted to her. Sadly, she failed to adjust her own bias, even though the American Psychological Association had stricken homosexuality as a mental illness from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual in 1973. Reparative Therapy began to be valued as the solution for 'curing' homosexual tendencies. Some of those who failed to reap the promised effects of these therapies were left to struggle with the cognitive dissonance of homosexual attraction and subsequently were left feeling rejected (by God), betrayed (by their own bodies) and abandoned (by the community) when their prayers to be changed were left unanswered and their attempts at resistance were met with failure.<br />
Bobby's central life stage challenge at the time of his blossoming sexuality would require reconciliation of the biopsychosocial tasks inherent in the Identity versus Role Diffusion phase of his development. According to Erikson, this is a time when adolescents proceed to establish a sense of personal identity relative to their particular systemic connections, or they become confused about who they are and what they want to do in life. It was perfectly obvious that Bobby, under the circumstances, would not be able to meet the challenges of this phase, reconciling his rising biological impulses with those of the social environment he was enmeshed with. As a result, his own psychological development and balance would be interrupted and inhibited from further integration, leading him to exist in a state of constant conflict and unresolved psychic tension. <br />
Further contributing and undergirding his conflict was the authoritarian manner in which institutional influences dominated his environment, as regards the demands placed on him to adhere to their set of behavioral requirements. His own mother stated "I won't have a gay son" which to a 16 year old with no other recourse, would seem like an ultimatum and an indictment. The pastor at his church preaching about the 'evils of the flesh' and the local school culture cracking jokes about 'fags' would further incriminate him and support a rationale for suppressing his true nature. In an effort to 'fit in', he experiments with heterosexuality, but he quickly realizes this is not his true self, and is obviously repulsed when his date encourages him to make a pass at her. Later on, when he moves away from home, Bobby finds a boyfriend and enjoys a dinner together at their family home. As he observes the nature of their transactions, he notices the stark contrast between how accepting they are of their own son's orientation and how rejecting his own family. Ultimately, this realization supports what he has already come to accept as true about himself: that there is something wrong with him that cannot be fixed, and from this point on, his own self-loathing becomes a permanently fixed. Unfortunately, Bobby does not resolve and reconcile the tasks associated with the Identity versus Identity Role Diffusion stage. <br />
Though not apparently explicit in the story, the film did hint at the violent consequences that Bobby would suffer if he were to reveal publicly his true self. At one point after he confides in his brother about his struggle with his homosexual feelings after trying to kill himself by taking a bottle of Bufferin, it becomes apparent that the community finds out, and at a scene where Bobby attends a school dance, the supporting characters are seen exchanging furtive whispers as he mingles with the crowd, and at one point he is intentionally bumped by the shoulder of another boy who looks at him with loathing, daring him to meet the challenge of defending his own dignity. Bobby slinks away, aware that to do so with no support to back him up, would be suicide.<br />
How ironic, since Bobby's life was inundated with patterns of suicidal themes and tendencies. After all, his entire life up to this point had been formed and shaped within the aegis of a religious and environmental culture that killed the initiative impulse. Rather, the forces that controlled him, placed so many restriction on the types of activities that were permitted and those that were not, that this would have caused him to fail to resolve the tasks of the earlier Initiative versus Guilt developmental stage, and may well have impeded his ability to resolve those required in the Industry versus Inferiority development stage as well. <br />
As a result, when Bobby leaves home to live with his cousin in a different part of the country in order to escape the strictures of his repressive life, he finds himself at a crossroads. His new life exposes him to an environment that is the antithesis of everything he had been bred to embrace. He starts hanging out in unhealthy sexually permissive environments that are more exploitative than nurturing. He frequents a strip bar; he begins to drink alcohol, and while he himself is not shown to engage in risky sexual encounters, in a later scene he observes his boyfriend leaving an establishment arm in arm with another male. This crushes Bobby's spirit and apparently is the 'straw that broke the camel's back', as the next scene in the movie shows him at the bridge when he commits suicide. <br />
For Bobby, the breach of trust was too much to take. The rejection by his own mother, whose attachment bonds were conditional, the strength of which depended on her approval of him and his behavior, had a devastating effect. The larger themes of abandonment and rejection dominating his life had reached their apex, and he found himself faced with the irresolvable conundrum that he could not change himself to align with the expectations of God, mother and society, and so he ended the conflict once and for all in a tragic act of self-destruction.<br />
The roots of Bobby's conflict did not begin in adolescence. They began far sooner than that in the earlier stages of his development and the issues arose for him primarily from within the authoritarian style of upbringing. No matter what the stage of development, Bobby had not be allowed to learn from his mistakes, and all his behaviors were closely monitored and controlled. His trust bond with his primary care-giver was conditional. His Autonomic power was limited by the range of values that could be explored within the context and confines of his family milieu; shame for this family was a powerful inhibitor of behavior. As mentioned earlier his Initiative was suppressed as he was discouraged to develop interests that lay outside the range of his own white fundamentalist family value system, encouraging him to avoid 'bad' things not approved by the family value system, and therefore developed a 'negative' style of engagement with life. Assuming all the challenges inherent in the previous successive stages of development had been satisfied and resolved, Bobby's life would have carried on in a much different manner.<br />
Had a favorable trust bond been immutably imprinted without condition, he would have proceeded through subsequent sequence of life stages with far greater success. He might not have questioned his own capability and potential; he might not have lived with the ultimately unbearable stress and strain of internal conflict that caused him to end his life.<br />
Out of the ashes of Bobby's life arose a new dove, a phoenix of hope that helps us all to see that when we question those values we've assumed as sacred truth, our survival is not at risk. Certainly, Bobby's mother clung to a value system that kept her psychic life in tact as she refused to compromise it, but, in a strange ecosystem quirk of morality and values, her refusal to risk compromise caused something else to die: her son. Had she been open minded enough to question her rigid mindset, and instead engaged an objective dialogue when first presented with the issue as a contrast of conflicting values, her son may be alive today. Even though she went on to transform her ignorance favorably for those who, like her son, struggle with the negative messages transmitted culturally around LGBTQ issues, it still remains that as long as those who hold the power of governance to shape and mold the attitudes that define what is culturally acceptable according to some arbitrary moral system based on dogmas and outdated, unfounded attitudes and superstitions, then the values of social justice upon which this nation were predicated will be mere empty lip service impotent to empower those most vulnerable to the rapacious thrust of majority rule. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_23?url=search-alias%3Ddvd&field-keywords=prayers+for+bobby+movie&sprefix=prayers+for+bobby+movie"></a>(<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_23?url=search-alias%3Ddvd&field-keywords=prayers+for+bobby+movie&sprefix=prayers+for+bobby+movie">Click here to check out prices for this Movies on Amazon.com</a>. It is also available for iphone through itunes.)</span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-83968698195529802192010-11-13T07:15:00.000-08:002010-11-13T07:15:39.040-08:00The Novel: Middlesex by Jeffry Eugenides<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">On 'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides</span></div><span style="font-size: large;"> The character I chose as the hypothetical client is the main character of the novel. Born Calliope Helen Stephanides into a Greek-American family of strong Greek Orthodox Immigrant influence and heritage, “Callie", unbeknownst to the family, is intersexed for many years, and subsequently is raised as a girl until he makes a decision to present himself as the male he believes himself to be. <br />
The novel was written as a memoir from Cal's point of view as 41 year old man, though throughout the novel, the narration modulates back and forth between the perspective of the girl, Callie, and the voice of the present-day Cal. However, the first half of the story is based on events that occurred prior to Callie's birth. As emigrants, Cal's grandparents (his grandmother, Desdemona, secretly married her blood brother Lefty), after fleeing riots their homeland in Asia Minor upon arriving in Detroit Michigan, lived with a cousin who had migrated earlier from Smyrna, their birthplace. <br />
One of the major themes of the novel is the subject of incest between the two siblings, however, that did not seem to hamper their functioning as a married couple making a family of their own. As a result of Cal's grandparents' diligence and hard work ethic, the family developed into an upper class immigrant family. They spawn and raise two children and after building up a successful family bar and restaurant business, the family moved into the Grosse Point neighborhood, at the time, a well established upper class neighborhood. As the grandparents fade into the background, Cal's father takes over the family business and continues to provide the same standard of living to which he had become accustomed. <br />
All three generations shared the same living quarters, assimilating into a culture surrounding them that was in the process of becoming homogenized, while in private maintaining their strong cultural ethic and customs of dress, speech and superstition. Callie's grandmother refused to learn the english language, and at the point when Callie was about to be born, the narrator, Cal, explains how his grandmother, Desdemona , dangling a spoon tied to a string over the pregnant mother's stomach, predicted by the arc of its movement that Cal would be a boy, while his parents made preparations for the birth of a girl. They were delighted when Callie emerged as female, because their first child had been born male. <br />
As it turns out, Callie inherited the mutation for a gene that causes 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which impedes the conversion of testosterone hormone ( causes the brain to become masculine) and dihydrotestosterone (molds male genitals). The condition was not apparent at the time due to the under-developed status of her genitals at birth, and so Callie was raised as female. However, as she begins puberty and adolescence, she begins to wonder why she has not begun menstruating like her peers, and why her breasts are not developing. She has all of her other faculties in tact and is performing within the range of full functionality. Intellectually she is bright and creative, but her body does not seem to be flowering as she anticipated that it would. Callie adapts to the deficits by becoming somewhat precocious in her social interactions, seeming mature and wise beyond her years, in spite of the fact that being an underdeveloped late bloomer, might cause her to feel inferior in high society adolescent culture. <br />
Now for the first time, we begin to see an identity beginning to form and take shape. As Callie's personality begins to emerge in adolescence, she seems to have liberal views, and this becomes apparent when she develops a 'crush' on one of her female classmates, whom she refers to only as the "Object Obscure". The Cal identity however seems to be invested in the social construct of binary gender relationships, and feels fear, guilt and perhaps shame at her attractions to her female friend. In her mind only boys and girls make valid relationship partners, and she sets out to align her outsides to match her insides. <br />
Still, in the secret of Callie's taboo attraction to the 'Object Obscure" she seems to find strength, and never once does she apologize for that attraction. Perhaps her fortitude and self-confidence are rooted in her bargaining power as a well adjusted young girl third generation immigrant girl having been born and bred in the crucible of a thriving, well established immigrant family. Under-girded by the socio-economic potentates inherited in a life of privilege, unhindered self-determination and unfoiled self-efficacy, she rose above the obstacles inherent in her particular human struggle, unimpeded by the foibles of her fate.<br />
Cal, in retrospect, writes that he is a man trapped in an hermaphrodite's body, meaning to say, that while his genitalia are primarily seen as female (though his breasts are not well developed), his sexual attractions are toward females. When Callie reaches puberty, her testosterone levels increase, resulting in the formation of a larger Adam's apple, deeper voice, broader muscles, and a larger clitoris that resembles a penis. Eventually, Callie's parents bring her to New York City to see a foremost expert on hermaphroditism, who believes she should retain her female identity. The doctor determines that she has the XY chromosomes of a male after inspecting Callie's genitalia. He plans a gender reassignment surgery to make her female. However, Callie knows that she is sexually attracted to females, and decides to run away to pursue a male identity as Cal. <br />
In comparing Callie's life experience with mine, her life was very different than mine, almost quite the opposite, although we did share more than one thing in common. The primary similarity was our struggle with sexual identity, and our orientation being at odds with cultural expectation and strong family religious ethic. The other thing we shared was the manner in which we struggled as a result of our late-blooming process of adolescent development. I never shaved until I was 21 and had very little body hair, and for a long time, this caused me to carry a lot of shame at not having developed like other males. <br />
Culturally, Callie was born to the breed, and very well connected in lineage to her generational Greek Orthodox family. My parents on the other hand, had no real knowledge of their generational lines, and our class was in the lower economic sphere. Callie was one of two offspring, and I was one of eight who survived a thirteen year run of twelve births by my Roman Catholic mother. As mentioned, In one respect we shared the value of religiosity and did all of the things required of our religion, but like the characters in the Stephanides clan, we too had our secrets, and our ethical expression of those values were incongruent to the ideology that belied them. Our parents told us not to smoke cigarettes, but they themselves did; they also told us not to use expletives, but they themselves did. Cal's grandparents knew incest was a taboo subject, but they made the choice to marry anyway. Callie's life exposed her to privileged degrees of educational experience, and my experience was in the local Roman Catholic parish church school. Even though Callie's grandparents appeared to be religious and had strong religious ethics, her own parents clung to the traditions merely out of habit. Because Callie was exposed to a higher degree of soci-economic currency, she was privvy to a broader range of opportunity than I, as the son of a hard working blue collar worker. Callie and I both however did seem to inherit the 'hard work gene'.<br />
When I think of the circumstances under which Callie might have had the occasion to become a client of mine, I would think that it would be at the point at which she runs away as a young minor when faced with the prospect of sex reassignment surgery. My effectiveness as a social worker might be compromised were she assigned to me. <br />
My initial impulse would be to want to shield her from the harm that she was facing in being forced to undergo the sex reassignment surgery. But I would also be conflicted about having her placed in foster care unless the placement was in a situation that would match the standard of living to which she had become accustomed and with care givers who would honor her right to self-determine. I would want for her comfort, and I'm not certain where this consideration falls in the specter of priority, or if in fact it does. <br />
I would definitely want the decision to have the surgery or not be hers alone and I would support her in whatever choice she made. However, my support, though noble in its intent, would not be springing from a sense of objectivity, but rather from my own desire to not have my own rights stripped away in such a dismissive manner. My ability to be objective would be at stake, since I would be too emotionally involved in her plight, and would be desiring to shield her from the struggles she faced. </span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-14101265758568036832010-09-04T06:28:00.000-07:002010-09-04T06:38:58.239-07:00Compulsive Hoarding : not just concrete stuff, mental stuff too<span style="font-size: large;"> After reading in the March 2010 edition of Discover magazine the article titled "<a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2010/the-brain/30-what-quirk-of-the-brain-turns-people-into-compulsive-hoarders">What Quirk of the Brain Turns People Into Compulsive Hoarders</a>?" the other day, for just a fleeting moment I understood the head and the heart of a hoarder.<br />
My particular brand of hoarding presents itself in terms of compulsive note taking and keeping (emphasis on the 'keeping' part), and it never dawned on me until after I had read the article that this is indeed the case, and not merely an incidence of the Barnum Effect. I made this realization as I was shuffling through old binders of kept notes from previous workshops and classes taken back in the period of 1996-2000 when I was working on my undergraduate degree in Organ and Sacred Music, and then later on my course work for the MM in Choral Conducting. I was hoping to avoid increasing the ever mounting price tag of my new educational endeavors here at the University of Pitt as I work toward a Master's in Social Work, so I thought that in order to serve that end I would simply recycle usable items from those prior educational phases.<br />
However, it was not that simple as I had imagined it would be. As I started to pour through the several volumes of binders overstuffed and pregnant with all sorts of topically arranged information, I found myself stuck in a dilemma as to which information was worth transferring from the binder to the trash bin. My mind seemed to enter panic mode as it initiated an assessment process regarding the question of the down side of pitching the old information. How could I justify throwing away these notes? In that moment I found myself nearly impotent to discharge the impulse to hang on to it, even though everything in the binders was replicated in a file system located on my computer's hard drive, and beyond that, it was also housed on a remote back-up server in cyber space. Nonetheless, there I stood, frozen for a long moment, uncertain of how to proceed. <br />
Standing there in that moment of hesitation I thought about Daniel, the hoarder from the article under consideration. Images of the television show "Clean House" began to crowd my mind. For a brief moment I related to him and him plight. In my particular situation, there was no concrete sensual offense associated with the notes that crammed my binders, which were kept hidden from sight, packed in cardboard boxes. There was no pungent odor to mask with potpourri and equally offensive air freshers, no cockroaches dropping from the ceiling, no piles of useless trash crowding the hallway, restricting access and flow from room to room like clogged arteries---- but on second thought, maybe there was!?<br />
A I thought about it more objectively when later removed from the subjectivity of the moment, I recognized that my need to cling to the 'stuff' of the past actually did contain elements of the obsessive compulsive disorder that Daniel struggled with. If a researcher had hooked me up to a brain scan machine at that moment and recorded the activity levels in the anterior cingulate cortex where the metabolic rates registers higher in moments of decision-making, </span><span style="font-size: large;">escalation of activity</span><span style="font-size: large;"> likely would have registered on the monitor. <br />
Had someone interviewed me and asked why I was retaining two forms of the same records and files, I honestly would not have been able to give them a straight forward answer, because, truth be told, I had not accessed the information in years. Here I was though, clinging to stuff in digitalized form, and while it was not so apparent to the real world I had to stop and wonder if the visual present in the article of a messy domicile dod not have its corollary expression within the mansion of my own mind. No, there were no odors, no visual debris, no tactile repugnance, still I found myself wondering if perhaps there were not at least some evidence of restricted flow in mental energy, some narrowing of the mental arteries as a result of the clinging to the unnecessary clutter in my mind. <br />
I had to ask myself: what purpose was being served in holding on to things that I no longer had use for? Perhaps it was merely some twisted loyalty to the past, and what the information represented. Perhaps my own identity was so wrapped up in the 'achievements" of the past, and to let these things go, would be facing death of sorts. Perhaps in my case, the roots of the 'dis-ease' did not run as deeply as Daniel's, or perhaps the disease was being manifested in a different way, still, my encounter with Daniel did prompt me to begin to consider how clinging to 'baggage' of the past keeps me tethered and less portable. <br />
As I thought more about the importance of the need to anchor, to attach, to imprint the bonding circuitry in early developmental stages of a humans life, it began to make sense that if the challenges of this life phase circuit had not been adequately forged, it would follow that one would seek to have it satisfied in many other allegorical forms throughout the life span. <br />
Regarding the failure of my own attachment process to supply the desired outcome, it would make sense that compensatory fear would drive a need to feel good about myself through the things that represented the goals I had attained, and the knowledge I had accrued. On the other hand, there is likely a bit of a 'hoarder' in each of us, and perhaps my over-arching attempts to manifest that through collection behaviors is innocent and non pathological. After all, in healthy ways, organizing can be a sign of efficient life strategy as long as it's done within flexible limits, remaining subject to reform as shifting environmental variables necessitate the need to readapt.</span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-14142997497765031672010-08-27T04:12:00.000-07:002010-08-27T04:15:48.451-07:00Attachment and Liberation<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="font-size: large;">My wondering and wandering through the tenets of attachment theory led me to deep understanding of what stoked the overly compensatory behaviors of my life. Once I realized and applied what it had to offer, it all began to make sense: the larger themes of abandonment and rejection that puppeted me from the shadows; the perfectionism and the need to micro manage my environment and the resultant obsessive compulsive behavior..... with the expectation that by concretizing my reality, I would be given a sense of permanency and trust that had never been achieved in the earlier developmental stage of my existence. These lessons must be learned before we can move onto more productive stages. But since I never got the necessary imprint of value and worth, of trust and safety, I was doomed and destined to keep trying to fulfill those needs through out my entire life. Thru recovery I reached a level of understanding, enabling me to see the nature of my blockages, and then to realize ways to eliminate them from my life, and thus became empowered to resume my life. Now, the record is no longer skipping. And all with the help of the God of my understanding, who supplied the candle and the company along the way.<br />
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My family were not 'bad' people. My parents were well intentioned, though ignorant of healthy child rearing skills (which had not been modeled for them), however, their flaw was not in that they were under educated, but that they refused to take advantage of sources and knowledge systems beyond those approved by their Roman Catholic faith for effective solutions to the many dilemmas they encountered in their child rearing challenge. They had been raised thinking the voice of science unimportant, and thus their parenting approach became a carbon copy of that of their parents. Inevitably, they became one dimensional, emotionally and psychologically unavailable, modeling ideas and impressed patterns of relating to their progeny that did not serve us as we carried those forms as relational models into broader relational experiences with persons, places and things outside of that milieu. <br />
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To replicate those patterns forward as life strategies became the approach for living and relating. However, once I began to learn that that strategy would not accomplish the goal of making connection to people, I modulated my behavior to the contrary strategy: avoidance and isolation. Soon, I began to use the pattern to my disadvantage by doing its opposite. Not having completed the necessary circuit of healthy bonding to a trusted source of nurture, it became my lot ( I love the biblical imagery there ....) and destiny to keep repeating the search for the 'teat' that would sate my need for 'food': the bond of love; until that happened I would become and ever remain "Lot" frozen in place always looking behind, unable to forge ahead. I became attached to the 'spot' I was in. It seemed as though the only way to establish meaning for myself would be by hitching my wagon to some other star (seeking yet again resolution of the elusive attachment bond through external sources). <br />
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Through the process of recovery I learned to choose nurturing 'stand ins' to supply the wiring that failed to happen in infancy, and once I developed relationships of trust with a few reciprocal and trusting others, I was then free to proceed to the next stage of development: establishing a healthy sense of ego, separate and autonomous, and self-determining. No longer interrupted, no longer seeking attachment to something outside myself in order to find my value and meaning, I was then able to proceed with the process of becoming and fulfilling my purpose for being the 'star stuff' that I am created to be.<br />
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Now that I understand it better, I am no longer needing to be angry about it. Not only have I liberated myself from a lesson that I was not able to complete in a timely fashion in my earlier days of life, but I no longer have to blame anyone, or be anyone's victim, waiting for permission or approval before deciding which are the right choices for me. <br />
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Unimpeded, I can design my life using the resources at my disposal, given as a birthright when I emerged from the very first womb that bore me into physical existence. </span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-57745944830369766392010-08-20T11:56:00.002-07:002020-12-07T19:18:57.200-08:00Blog Blurbs: What is Toxic Shame?<div><object align="middle" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" height="25" id="mp3playerlightsmallv3" width="210"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.podbean.com/podcast-audio-video-blog-player/mp3playerlightsmallv3.swf?audioPath=http://reclaimingnow.podbean.com/mf/web/qfjsy/toxicshame.mp3&autoStart=no" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" height="25" name="mp3playerlightsmallv3" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.podbean.com/podcast-audio-video-blog-player/mp3playerlightsmallv3.swf?audioPath=http://reclaimingnow.podbean.com/mf/web/qfjsy/toxicshame.mp3&autoStart=no" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="210" wmode="transparent"></embed> </object></div><span style="font-size: large;">What does it mean to take on toxic shame?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Shame itself is not a 'bad' thing, and is itself a normal human emotion; but Toxic shame does not help to build emotional stability and a healthy sense of self respect and self-esteem. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Toxic shame usually has its roots in the early childhood development stages of the past, and comes about as a result of a child in a vulnerable position being overpowered by expectations and demands of another stronger person, which cause the child to internalize messages which cue them to begin thinking poorly about themselves at an early age.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Usually the person in power is a parental figure or their representative, or a teacher, or a representative of an institution whose opinions have been adopted through public approval as being more credible and worthwhile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">When the weaker person asserts his needs, which are then invalidated by outright rejection, they are left with a sense that because their request is unimportant, that it follows that they themselves are unimportant. Or when they are treated in a harsh, dismissive, or demeaning manner; the child given this treatment feels the 'put-down' of being forced to acquiesce to the preferences of the more powerful person. They end up feeling diminished.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This sense of being discounted becomes normal and eventually establishes a template for life pattern responses, and leaves the more vulnerable person in a disempowered state causing them to question not only their own judgment, but their own needs. This teaches to them to invalidate and ignore the inner voice that arises to give them guidance and direction. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Furthermore, it teaches them to yield their power of self-determination to external sources, causing them to develop attitudes of dependency, always seeking validation from sources outside themselves deemed credible and valid by others. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As the proper exercise of right judgment is inhibited, feelings of low self-worth are continually reinforced creating a vicious cycle of thought patterns that are carried forward from moment to moment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In order to reclaim now, it is important that one first reject the entrenched notions that they are not smart enough to make decisions on their own, begin to develop faith and trust in their own reasoning powers, allowing them to over-ride the long standing thoughts patterns that say from within "I can't", "I'm not good enough, or worthy enough". </span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-35642162179515816672010-08-16T09:14:00.000-07:002010-08-18T04:10:50.315-07:00Blog Blurbs: Abuse and Attempts to ReClaim Control<div><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" width="210" height="25" id="mp3playerlightsmallv3" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.podbean.com/podcast-audio-video-blog-player/mp3playerlightsmallv3.swf?audioPath=http://reclaimingnow.podbean.com/mf/play/8rdtyh/control.mp3&autoStart=no" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed src="http://www.podbean.com/podcast-audio-video-blog-player/mp3playerlightsmallv3.swf?audioPath=http://reclaimingnow.podbean.com/mf/play/8rdtyh/control.mp3&autoStart=no" quality="high" width="210" height="25" name="mp3playerlightsmallv3" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /></embed> </object><br />
</div>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-21957255413950683422010-08-10T05:43:00.000-07:002010-08-10T05:43:21.033-07:00Triggers: Response versus Reaction<i> <span class="UIStory_Message">“When you let others “push your buttons,” you give away power. You give them power to trigger powerful emotions at will. Once you are aware of your own reactions, you can disconnect the buttons so they no longer work. When buttons don’t work, people eventually stop pushing them. When that happens, you have claimed mean<span class="text_exposed_hide"></span><span class="text_exposed_show">ingful power.” Lost in the Mirror by Richard Moskovitz</span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This quote definitely inspired a response. I can succinctly remember the occasion when the light switched on for me regarding triggers. </span><br />
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I had been at work, and something happened that instantly put me in a state of hyper-arousal. This was a unique situation, because it was actually the first time I became of aware of what was happening inside me, and how it was causing me to act.<br />
Suddenly, without even thinking, I sprang into action, as if I was on my way to put out a fire! My feet started moving very quickly, my heart started palpitating, I started hyperventilating, my mind started racing a mile a minute. <br />
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The second I realized what was overtaking me, I was able to stop myself. I stopped my feet dead in their tracks. I called a halt to the barrage of emotional energy that was flooding my brain. I began to shut out the ruminations that were pouring thru my mind, I sat down and focused on calming my breathing. <br />
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I began to relax, I sat there for a moment, and decided that whatever I thought about the importance of that which I was allowing to affect me in such a way. This was no crisis mind you. This was not a medical emergency. It was something of such little importance that I was aghast to realize how something so insignificant could have such a power to cause an automatic and involuntary reaction, a trigger as it is called. <br />
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This was the beginning of a new approach to my recovery. This was the moment I began to learn the difference between 'reaction' and 'response'. </span><br />
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Prior to this, reaction ruled me; it had power over me. It dictated the course of action that i would follow. It was the bridle in the horses mouth that when tugged left made me go left; when tugged right, made me go right.<br />
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In response mode, I can refuse the bridle. I just take it off, and make decisions without being controlled by my out of control emotions.<br />
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Later on during a time of reflection, I thought about this occasion, and while outside outside of reactivity mode with my wits about me, I was in a calm enough place to begin to recognize that there were patterns in my life when this often happened. Recognizing the patterns allowed me to get to know my motivations better, and then begin to question their validity.<br />
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Most of the deeper issues that spawned the type of reactivity mentioned above I soon realized were tied into broader themes of rejection and abandonment, shame and self esteem that ruled my life from the shadows, and held dominance over my present moments.<br />
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As I got to know and understand myself and my motivations better in times of reflective responsive lucidity, I began to create new patterns of response in my life, and in that way, I took back my power and began to reclaim now.</span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1518071198831453494.post-40869983589354958932010-08-09T05:52:00.000-07:002010-08-09T05:56:33.653-07:00From Overpowered to Empowered<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="font-size: large;">Christina wrote a brilliant blog over at <a href="http://overcomingsexualabuse.com/2010/07/27/power-trip-how-to-journey-from-overpowered-to-empowered/">Overcoming Sexual Abuse Website</a> about How to Journey from Overpowered to Empowered. This message is an especially timely reminder for me because of the recent and seemingly on-going major shifts and moves that I have made in my life over the last three years. And it always seems to be in life's 'cracks' where I discover the self defeating beliefs that tend to drive my life subconsciously from the shadows. </span><br />
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It's then that I discover all of the 'things' I use, and give away my power to, in order to achieve and maintain a measure of comfortablilty and balance in the rough transitional spots. You mentioned two of my favorites and they are both would be remedies for particular ingestive maladies that I had used during my life in order to keep myself 'in line' ie, powerless. </span><br />
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Robert Anton Williams states: Inside of us lives both a thinker and a prover; "What the thinker thinks, the prover proves". Fascinating how that little phrase characterizes the dynamic of both the victim mentality and the survivor/thriver mentality. Once we flip the switch from glass half-empty (victim) to glass half-full mentality (survivor), then as you say, we can then gain the potential to move onto the next phase for designing the substance that we'll use for filling up the glass to full and overflowing (thrivor) mentality. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">How do you get from Overpowered to Empowered? We each have to answer that for ourselves, but <a href="http://yahya-zaba.blogspot.com/2010/08/hole.html">this may give you a great place to begin.</a><br />
</span>Mumblin Wordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07996373580401178635noreply@blogger.com0