There is nothing wrong with a bit of emotion, but posting on a forum where you advertise your services?

No offense to the OP, but I find her quite inarticulate, and could not see myself benefiting from her services as a counselor.

I just visited your website Caroline. Congratulations to all of your achievements !!

I think there is something truly fascinating and rewarding about being a counsellor.
You don't have to have answers for everything though or be able to explain and make sense of all the why's and how come I think,
as you've pointed out yourself there you don't have the answers anyway!

I don't think that is the reason why people come to see you or expect from you in the first place.
They need someone to give them some stability back, someone who's listening, someone who gives them hope that they will make it through this mess or hardship,
someone who gives them a tiny little tool to make it through another day.
Maybe just a little bit of silence, calming down the storm to see clearly again. Some hope that the pain will die down a little in time.

Also choosing a profession like that means you've made a conscious decision to deal with human tragedies
which probably requires great humility to have to admit that this will drive yourself into utter despair at times too,
realizing that you too are just a mere human being and have your limits even with all the studies and years of practicing.

If you cannot engage emotionally with your clients, then you won't be able to work with them. The best couselors, therapists, etc are those that can have some feeling for the client or patient and then help the patient reframe or see the difficulty differently, in a way that helps the client. For example, if one is anxious, learning to look at things as opportunities rather than threats is helpful. That's a gross simplification, of course, it's a lot of hard work, especially for the patient. But the therapist needs to have the person's trust, requiring some engagement. And of course anyone would be affected by a tragic story. YOu have bigger problems if you're not.

What you describe - people wanting to hear of others misfortunes as a way of making themselves feel better is a very common phenomenon in the general public. It's a downward social comparison - your life looks better in comparison when someone is doing worse. There's also a lot of voyeurism in society.. we want to see misfortune sometimes to make ourselves feel better by trying to experience some guilt. Sort of like cold water on the face. But, I think you're wrong in that most people in mental health professions go into it for reasons like that. You would not be able to stand it day after day. It's really difficult, punsihing.

As for the number of social workers and counselors, I don't know. I do not think there are not enough psychiatrists and psychologists and medically trained therapists. I'm also an American, so am used to different systems, but I believe the OP has medical training.

Finally, these are just my opinions - I'm not a mental health provider, but I am a researcher and have been what we call in the US, a mental health consumer.

A good read:

'The Bridge of San Luis Rey', by Thorton Wilder.

http://www.tcnj.edu/~wilder/works/bridge.html

Is it not possible for me to state my opinion on this matter without the religious freaks going bat-**** crazy about it?
I wasn't looking for a debate about the existence of your god, in case you didn't notice.

Sorry, sweetheart: You were the one who began making bold assertions on this thread. Don't start whining when people return the favour.

haha this seems a funny thread title to have, some of the ideas i myself have always disliked, to be honest.

to begin with the idea that there are good and bad people, is pretty ridiculous to me and i'm surprised that a counselor would separate people into these realms. my mom is a therapist and i was brought up to believe that all people are just people, capable of doing both good and bad things- some more than others and either way there being explanations, regardless of validity, as to what exactly people do and why.

that being said i wonder what the idea is that bad things shouldn't or wouldn't happen to certain people, everyone, regardless of anything, experiences good and bad sh*t in their lives and often these are times when most people look for support in what they believe (God, karma, etc) and those that they feel close to. in my (somewhat) short time on this planet, i have seen various horrible things happen to people i love and people i don't even know, and most of the time they have survived these things and grown in some form or another, although i have seen the most growth and healing happen in those that have a belief in some sort of spirituality and/or an amazing and close group of support (family, friends). i'm sure most would agree that makes a huge difference.

that being said, to answer the question "why", i guess it's really "well, why not?" bad stuff, horrible stuff, happens to everyone- there is no appreciation, no grace for what anyone has- health, family, money whatever, until these same things are lost, injured, etc.

This is a good point. Things were much harder for people in the past, people lost a lot of children from things like the flu and things we can easily cure now, people were sicker and died from things we have cures for now, plus people died from tragedies like wars or wild animals killing them and things like that that we don't have to deal with today. Yet they did manage to cope and move on and seemed to understand better than people do today that things just happen.

That's a good analogy.

That's a good point too, people used to live in such extended family type situations that there was always plenty of support in ways where seeking help outside was not necessary. Yeah the world worked by a whole other system back then.

Yeah, no one wants to pour thier heart out to a cold robot like emotionless person who will listen and then just give cold robotic answers. People do need to feel like someone else feels for them and what they are going through when they talk to them.

Why are you getting all defensive and resorting to name calling? I am no "reilgious freak" just because I believe in God. Why can't YOU handle that some choose to believe in God and others don't and just respect that. You are the one who brought up belief in God, so if you can't handle someone discussing thier belief in God you should not have mentioned anything about God at all. No one brought up God until you said something. You want the right to state that you don't believe in God but don't want others to have the right to state that they DO believe in God. Then when someone does mention it you resort to name calling, and you call believers in God "freaks"? Seems like you are the unreasonable one in this thread.

LOL!! Exactly! He brought it up! He wants the right to state how he feels but gets mad when others state how they feel and then resorts to name calling!

We don't really know that, do we.. I mean that people coped better. We have the impression that they did, but I just don't think that we know. Everything always looks better at a distance. And the good old days weren't always that... if you had something wrong with you, or you were different, you might as easily have been locked away in an attic. I just don't buy that it was better in terms of coping and the extended family and all....

Dearest DB, not whinging, you could have simply let it pass. Obviously, you couldn't. XOXO.

Ok I just couldn’t help adding my two cents so here are some thought specifically about the situation of the couple who lost their daughter to Leukemia.

I wanted to possibly help shed some light on the situation from a natural process standpoint to help you get a bigger picture of what might have been happening instead of thinking that "bad things happen to good people" etc...and that whole misunderstanding that there was somehow something against them or something like that...

A lot of times when there is physical stuff going on like illness, etc...it can be very well undrstood from a health perspective if you know how to piece the bits together. Of course I can't know for sure, but I can use my logic and understanding and experience of medicine/health to get a pretty good idea...

In my experience and understanding of nutritional medicine and how disease and people's bodies function...there was an actual reason that the couple were unable to concieve naturally - most likely severe nutritional deficiencies on either one or both parties which prevented their hormones from functioning correctly, thus producing an offspring naturally.

The use of IVF to finally concieve didn't solve this underlying problem and that is why IVF is so often unsuccessful and frankly in my opinion very risky (although I understand why people resort to it in desperation as I have walked through infertility myself, but managed to treat it nutritionally/naturally) in the sense that even though they are able to conceive a child through it, the difficulty in carrying the baby to term and then the child being healthy is very likely since the mother's body still has the deficiencies and would have passed them on to the child.

The fact that the child developed leukemia is an indicator that her poor wee body was already very compromised from birth as a result of those deficiencies or imbalances which only got worse to the point of developing cancer. Certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies can predispose problems with bone marrow function and also with the cell's ability to regenerate properly, as well as other things.

Now I am not saying that everyone who has deficiences or imbalances is going to develop cancer, although that does happen a lot, particularly with stomach acid deficiency which predisposes to digestive tract cancers, but I can say that they very very likely will develop one type of disease or another, depending on their body's inherited strengths and weaknesses - for her it was leukemia, for someone else it may have been stomach cancer, or Autism, or ADHD or who knows..

Point being that as much as it is right to be moved by the pain that they are suffering, it is not some mystical and weird unknown that caused them to lose their child or anything like that, but simply the fact that we are all living in a pretty messed up world where our bodies are degenerating and we are subject to a whole host of things that are against us in many ways. The key is to do whatever we can to counteract those things so that we can be as healthy and fulfilled as we can and help others to do the same so they can live fulfilled and meaningful lives while we can.

That’s my two cents...

P.S if anyone wants any more info about how nutrition and deficiencies/imbalances affect your body's functioning, or how they can lead to different diseases or anything, or even about natural ways to help correct fertility problems, feel free to PM me...I would be happy to discuss your situation with you and give you any advice or tips that could be interesting for you or help.

I do !The Taxman

And give you an easy ride?

No chance!

sorry offensive load of crap

Not everyone needing IVF is because they are nutritionally deficient

Please this is twice on this thread now that i have read between the lines of IVF being maybe the cause/issue, messing with nature just give up on kids etc.... please people think before speaking and arm yourselves with more knowledge before spouting sh!te like above

Nicky

Are you a professional?

And how does that work ?

Bad things happen to good people, so they can complain "Why me?"

Good things happen to good people, so they can say "I deserved it"

Bad things happen to bad people so they can get more vindictive.

Good things happen to bad people so they can carry on saying "I must be doing something right"

Because some poeple are just unlucky , i guess we all have good and bad happen to us , but sometimes the bad overwhelms us.

the trick is to keepon being good and not losing heart when it gets nasty.

the true measure of character is what would we behave like if we knew it would go unnoticed.

.