My First Counseling Tid Bit!

For those of you who don't already know…I am in my first semester of graduate school. I am working on getting my master of education in counseling and later getting my LPC licensure (licensed professional counselor). I am taking 12 hours this summer - 2 classes in June and 2 in July. The program is a total of 52 hours. This will probably take me 2 1/2-3 1/2 years to complete while working full-time. This is why I am trying to do as much as possible in the summer before school starts up again in August.
I am currently taking two graduate classes, one online and one on Mondays & Wednesdays from 1-5pm. The online class is a Counseling Career Development class and the face-to-face class is Counseling Diverse Populations - a class on counseling multicultural clients…this doesn't just include someone from another race, but someone from another culture can include: a person's gender, someone who is able-bodied or disabled, a person's sexual orientation, a person's religion, and different beliefs and values that a person may have.

I'm not going to say that I agree with everything that is said in this class, but I did learn something that I really liked on Wednesday. It was in the context of offending someone because of their cultural difference, but I like to use it in marriage or friendships or just in life in general. :)

When you harm someone without meaning to, often times we blow it off and say something like, "you shouldn't feel that way because I didn't mean it that way," or "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but I didn't mean to."We rationalize what we said because we didn't have negative intentions…often times we were just being thoughtless or careless with our words.

A great metaphor for this is a lady walking around town with a large knife in her hand. She stumbles and accidentally cuts her husband. If this was you, you wouldn't just say, "oh, don't feel pain, I didn't mean to do it." Instead you would say "Oh! I am SO sorry I hurt you!" The reason for this is that you harmed them, even though you didn't mean to. You would take responsibility for the wound that you could see, but we don't take responsibility for the verbal wounds that we cannot see.



A great quote that my professor said, "I didn't harm you intentionally, but you're still harmed."



Have you ever been hurt by someone's words even when they didn't hurt you intentionally? If so, does it feel good to have them tell you that you shouldn't feel that way? Do not hold onto bitterness for their mishap…you're actions are still your responsibility…but it always feels better to have someone understand that you are harmed. Knowing that you harmed someone and taking responsibility that you "goofed up" goes a long way.

Accidental harm still hurts.

So, what do you think? Ready to have me counsel you? Haha ;)