First of all, you need to watch this wonderful video. OK, did you do that? Great! Now we’re on the same page. Let’s talk.

I know a lot of us limit our kids’ access to media, especially women’s magazines and Go Daddy commercials, and that’s terrific but our kids hang with other people’s kids and so when you watch this video, think about how often the influence of that media bleeds through even when our children aren’t explicitly exposed to it.

39 seconds into this excellent video you’ll learn that after 3 minutes of leafing through a fashion magazine, 3 out of 4 girls feel terrible about themselves:

And then you discover that about half of them have strong feelings about how women ought to look:

Maybe it’s not enough to limit our children’s access to media. Maybe we also need to remember that most people aren’t going to so that we can remember that we also need to talk about the messages our children might get from the friends they love and cherish.

Nearly half of the little girls in first, second and third grade want to lose weight. That means nearly half of our daughters feel like their bodies need improving on before they turn nine. It’s going to take more than hiding magazines and fast-forwarding through commercials to innoculate our kids from feeling “depressed, guilty and shameful” for being regular human beings instead of photoshopped figures of perfection.

We need talk to our children about the messages they are likely going to hear from other children. How many of us can remember sitting in gym class or at a slumber party or in the dressing room and critiquing our and each other’s bodies for sport? That’s why we need to talk about body image in the same way we talk about sex and drugs and all that other hard stuff that comes with growing up. We have to say, “Lots of kids worry about being thinner/having bigger msucles/etc. and you’re going to hear that. How will you handle it when someone tells you that there’s something wrong with your body?” And we need to start talking about that early and often. Please don’t wait until your daughter starts going through puberty to have these discussions because those adorable 8-year olds on the playground are already telling each other it’s no ok to be fat.

We need to help our kids get ahead of those messages especially when self-hate is seen as a way to fit in:

Maybe that video I shared at the top should be subittled: How the Media You Don’t Consume Can Still Change Your Life

Thanks to blue milk for the link!

"Once, when Maurice Sendak was being interviewed on television a little after the success of Where the Wild Thigns Are, he was asked the usual questions: Do you have children? Do you like children? After a pause, he said with simple dignity, "I was a child." That says it all.

~ P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins

But to be a newbie counselor is to want clear answers and one of the big learning curves for most of us in practicum and internship is to discover that you can’t drop your client into a computer program and get a nice, neat treatment plan out the other end. (Actually I hear there are a couple of computer programs that do this but you know what I think of that? I think that’s gonna be some lousy therapy.)

As I wrote in a previous entry (that I’m too lazy to go link to so just trust me that I wrote it), when I feel anxious to DO SOMETHING with a client, it usually means I need to stop and do nothing. It usually means that I need to figure out what’s making me anxious and usually what’s making me anxious is the client’s anxiety. S/he wants answers, s/he wants to feel better and s/he is looking at me to make that happen. Only I can’t make my clients do or feel anything; only they can. When I’m operating from a place of anxiety I forget that.

Where is my island?

I remember when I first went to therapy myself. I was 18 and miserable and I expected to walk out of that very first session much improved. I expected therapy to be magic, I guess. Of course it doesn’t work that way and therapy takes a lot of work and sometimes you leave a session feeling worse than you did when you went in because it’s a process, not a quick fix. Still, I always thought my wonderful, kind and insightful therapist was a little big magical because no matter how hard I was working she remained loving and calm, like a safe island in my own personal tumultuous sea.

So I knew this from my own experience but I certainly had my therapist up on a pedestal. I realized somewhere during my first or second semester of school that I was still harboring this secret hope that at some point — maybe around the time of my class on diagnosis — I was going to get some of those magic and mysterious powers that she seemed to have that would allow me to fix people who were broken as easily as she seemed to fix me. Really, I knew better. But I so benefited from my own counseling that a wee hidden part of myself still kind of thought it was magic.

Well, I am sorry to tell you that there is not even a touch of Hogwarts in the community counseling program and that what we’re learning, while fascinating, is not a bit magical. Nope, instead we’re learning some basic counseling skills (critical thinking, empathy, how to listen, how to convey that you’re listening, etc.) and some basic counseling knowledge (theories, what the research says, what it doesn’t say, where to get more info) and we are practicing, practicing, practicing to trust that when we master the skills and use the knowledge that we will be able to help our clients help themselves.

That means not letting the client’s anxiety futz up the calm you’ve got going on in your head because if you’re catching their anxiety then not only are you not going to be able to be a calm island, but you’re probably going to leap to an intervention in a desperate attempt to do something, anything, whether or not that intervention is what the client needs. (When I say intervention, I mean grabbing, say, a worksheet to fill out or an exercise to do or homework to give.) It’s not the intervention that’s necessarily the issue; the problem is that we newbie counselors are sometimes using them as crutches because it’s kind of scary to sit there and do nothing even when nothing is exactly what we’re supposed to do. (And when I say nothing, I don’t mean NOTHING exactly because to sit with a client who is crying and to be an accepting, loving presence who is willing to give him/her space to cry without trying to stop his/her tears with empty comfort or advice is doing something and the fact that it’s so hard to do is proof of that.)

Sometimes counseling does feel magical. Sometimes when I’m meeting with a client and I’m really hearing him/her and I am fully present in the session, it feels like when I’m on a writing tear that works. It feels exactly the same way. (And I’ll tell you, I am loving counseling the way that I love writing.) And I know that writing is about skill and practice and OK, some talent but not as much as the skill and practice part so I trust that counseling is that way, too, which has demystified it for me and let me start having fun with it even when it’s hard.

• Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Brain Development
• Prevention: Supporting Children’s Well-Being and Breaking the Cycle of Violence
• Overview of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics
• Changing the Cycle of Child Abuse & Family Violence: What Systems Can Do to Build Better Lives

I have a professional crush on him.

One profound way that enduring relationships increase hope is through their effect on shame. Shame is the sense that deep within me I am no good, that I have a rotten center, and that anyone who gets to know me will turn from me in horror. But what if in fact this doesn’t happen? The antidote to shame is to be known, to share the secret self, and to have the other person not be repulsed. This is so hard to accomplish, because the person who experiences shame is so reluctant to share his true self, which he feels is so horrible. But if we are able to create a relationship that is strong and safe enough, and the client does share with us the parts they hide, we have a precious opportunity. By validating and not turning away, we begin to heal the shame. Consider how much hope flows into a person’s life as shame decreases, and the possibility of being a normal human emerges.

via Trauma Treatment for Children: Building Hope.