Calm Before the Storm

So, my classes start back up tomorrow. I've really enjoyed having the last couple of weeks off, especially after that crazy five week semester with two classes. NEVER doing that again. I have never been that stressed about anything for that long. The classes were great, though; I loved both of my professors and learned a lot. That, at least, helped with the stress.

I'm looking forward to my classes for the semester. I have a family therapy class, Clinical Techniques, and Human Sexuality. This should be fun. Clinical is bound to be my most work-intensive class, what with all the tapes and case conceptualizations I'll be turning in. However, I'm expecting to learn a lot about myself as a counselor, which is both exciting and a little terrifying. We've been practicing, you know, with fellow students and role plays, but I know there's so much more to it than just discovering covered issues - it's actually dealing with them and working to improve them. We haven't done a whole lot of that yet. That's the part I'm most scared of but also most interested in. Yes, we can find problems - but our purpose as counselors is to help people with those problems, not to just find new ones or deeper explanations for already acknowledged ones. It's like one of my favorite lines from Grey's Anatomy from Christina: "You know, being aware of your crap and actually overcoming your crap are two very different things."

I have always been good at finding problems. That's not a bad thing, especially in certain situations. Nevertheless, finding those problems is useless unless something is actually done about them. Okay, you found it - now do something to fix it. I often get so immersed in finding the problem that I forget to find the solution. Sometimes, it's laziness. I find it easy to think someone else will deal with it. This is often because I think of all the ways I'm not equipped to deal with it. So I stop at finding the problem, talk to someone about it, then pray it goes away or gets fixed. If you haven't figured it out by now, that's a not-so-successful way to go about things.

Now, I just recently figured out the above problem with myself. The thing is, now I have to do something about it. Whoa. Now that I have a clearer picture of how I react to issues, I have to start DOING something to change it. This will take a while (as serious change always does), but it's something I know is worth working for.