The CI is fucked!

The CI is fucked!
Here I am again in the same spot. My supervisor asked me today why I let this get me all the time.
I walk out to think about it, and I went back to the past, and I thought:
Several reasons; because I am Latina, and we don’t take BS, because I don’t do that, trying to harm a counselor just to get power.
So who I work with now????
I work with a very egocentric counselor. This counselor wants to please clients in order to get their approval.
She lies and deceives.
Yesterday I confront her about what she did to me and she right way started to talk about the hitter, and ask if the air condition was on.
I know she did that to have time to think. Then she denied everything. I was aware that she would.
But what really happen????
In the other day I was in group, and I thought that some of her clients are running from me, and don’t talk to me anymore like before.
I thought that was because their counselor forbidden them to talk to me, but I didn’t give too much attention to that. To be honest I had much more going on in my head that paying attention to that. I did wrong! I should have pay attention.
So it’s Friday and one of her clients walked into my office to tell me that her counselor is making questions about me, and what I do in my shift.
I know the client was being honest. I could feel, I could see.
This counselor told the supervision that I was meeting with this client.
When my supervisor asked me if I was meeting with the client I didn’t understand right way!!!!!
Meeting????
I asked: what do you mean?
Having individual sessions with the client.
Oh God! Individual session???? Over time???
I said: NO!
But what I do I talk with the client like I talk with all of them. I help all of them.
I am not possessed with clients. I will help who needs help.
So, I have this client at 6.30am crying, and crying, and what you want me to do???? Ignore?????
Can’t ignore!
It’s my responsibility to see what is going on and how can I help.
BUT, for this counselor that is making her feel rejected! For this counselor this means loosing control and power.
So we cannot talk with her caseload.
Sad isn’t? Very sad, very sad!
So when the clients get as a message that her caseload can’t talk with other clients, what do you think is going to be the real message??????
“ oh…… the staff doesn’t get along!!!!!! We can split them!!!!!!!”
I am here right now writing this and thinking:
Why God, why the supervision let this happen? why?”
I can’t understand. I can’t understand their point of view”
I told my supervisor “she is a bad person!”
Like I said before she denied and she said is clients to are trying to split staff.
Honesty, I know wasn’t the clients, but also honesty, I am tired of the drama, and she will denied until the end, I am going to let them think that were the clients.
So here I have a counselor who refuses and find ways to not do groups, because she is busy on gossip.
So today Saturday I arrived work and was in log on book “didn’t do groups”
My thought was: “oh God, again??? She didn’t do the two 16 groups???
So today when she arrived I asked her: witch group you want to do? You want to do the 2 hours family group or the yellow group?
Her answer was the same than last week “I can’t do any! I have 5 indv. Sessions to do!”
I was assertive and I told her that I couldn’t do the yellow group because I had one last indv. Session to do.
So here I go to do the 2 hours group.
Then she started saying that her last director from another company gave her email and phone number to her ex clients.
Fuck fuck and fuck…she lei again!!!! I know that she does that. I know she gives her phone number and email to the clients!
Then she started to tell me how they miss her in the other company, and they want her back, and how wonderful is the other company.
Then she keeps going saying that Cornell doesn’t have care and concern for the counselors and the other company has.
See, I have a problem with dishonesty.
What I am going to do?
Enough, I am going to shut down, simple as that.
Next week on staff meeting I even won’t say a word
Why? Simple I am exhausted!
I am tired!
I wish I could have a coworker who I had fun with to balance my day with clients
I wish I could have a coworker that would work as much as I do, and would respect me.
And at the end who gets fuck? The CI will.

The slick and devious counselor - more up front - the liar!

So in this field we have a bunch of liars working as counselors.
They are slicker than clients.
So let me start for what I am been learning and watching them do.
So we have this counselor on the cottage that her worry now is the paper work that is missing from the files. She sent emails almost everyday asking for that. For my part I already gave her what she asked for, but she kept sending emails to the other counselors.
Isn’t wrong what she is doing, isn’t wrong at all, and is just a contradiction!
This counselor sleeps in individual sessions and groups. She just passes out.
This counselor call sick a lot of times, and I know she is lying. She just doesn’t want get out of the bed.
So the only way to proof that she deserves to be there is showing them how good she is with paper work.
Then I have this counselor working with me who walks into the unit and says “it’s all good”, then she walks in the office and “it’s all bad”
She decided to spend her Wednesday gossiping with the other LCDC, because she doesn’t do her caseload like she is suppose to do. Then I don’t know what she does where a left, but I guess nothing because she is always late to do what she is suppose to do.
She is trying to make me do everything, and to do her groups. I refused Saturday, I snap.
Well after 1 year been abuse by different counselors I think is valid my snap.
When I arrive to this new unit I worked with the best counselors until the day she walked in to work there. My nightmare was back! I had a good few months and now I was fuck again.
I snap because I saw someone cross my boundaries again.
In other day I had to do a bunch of PO reports for other counselors because they didn’t make it, so my supervisor asked me to do it for them.
Now we have this ex. continue treatment care supervisor who is running unit D as a TC.
Oh my God!!!!!!!!!!
What the fuck is going on??????
Is this a circus?????? Or what????
Let me tell you how I work.
I arrive Wednesday and right way I start my individual session, and I do my caseload.
I really don’t give a shit about staff meeting because is all about gossiping anyway, so I decided to be there for a few moments and I go back to work.
I know the schedule and I know how many clients I have so I know exactly how many clients I have to see in order to follow the schedule. Even if I don’t want see the clients I know I have to be organizing and not procrastinate.
At 25 of each month I start to do my PO reports. Before the end of the month my supervisor already had them in his hands.
So this is all about time management, but some of them decide that this is all about use the CI, and spend time gossiping, or on the computer.
Some of them they just do what they want, and they don’t do what the company asks them to do.
This is very disrespectful, and becomes a circus.
This just brings problems. This kind of counselors makes the treatment center a circus.
We never know what is next.
Everyone should be working on the same page.

Dream, Dream

Dreams
Dream, dream with a better life! I never stop dreaming
Even when I was a child I would dream to see my father again.
I would dream to be adopted for a better family
I would dream that I may made a mistake in the hospital, and I was from another family
Then I started to dream I want to be someone, I wanted fit
So I started to dream I was a punk rock girl, so I join the punk population
Then I dream that I wanted to be this sexy heavy metal girl who stays in the streets with a bunch of guys and girls with a very long hair, wearing black clothes, so I join then
I dream that I wanted to be mean and not a good person, so I kept trying to be mean. My dream was if I get mean no one can hurt me again.
None of this cases I successes. Didn’t make sense, but I kept sticking with my dreams
When I was using drugs I had this dream that I wanted to have a normal life, and be clean. That dream was the most difficult dream to get, so I started to dream I wanted to die.
I decided that I didn’t want to dream anymore, so was when I started to become suicidal, I kept trying to kill myself, and people kept finding me passing out, and rescued me, and rush me to the hospital to make me live.
I still remember that paramedic who told me in the ambulance “please don’t die on me, you are so beautiful, stay with me”
Sir wherever you was, wherever you are, thank you! I am alive, and I had become a great woman.
I got clean, finally, and my dreams changed. I didn’t want to be the street girl anymore, I wanted to be independent. Didn’t know how to be, and how to start.
I just kept dreaming…one day I will be like this, like that
11 years ago I was in treatment and I had this BIG dream to become a counselor.
I remember at that time that dream was like unbeliever.
I remember I had a one with my counselor at that time and I told him “hey I want to be a counselor, but I think I won’t because I was a street girl”
My counselor at that time disclosure information about him, and he told me “… so I I had become, you will become a counselor…”
He supported my dream, and gave the strength I need it.
Because of this I have now this dream to find him and let him know that I had become a counselor. I didn’t realize that dream yet because I don’t know where he works, or if he is in Portugal or Italy. But I keep dreaming that one day I will find him, and I will let him know what that 26 years old girl had become.
Left treatment dreaming that I wanted to have a driver license, and a car. Got it!
Kept dreaming that I wanted to have a house. Got it!
Kept dreaming that I wanted a good job and lots of money. Got it!
5 years in recovery passed, and I wasn’t yet a counselor. But I kept saying “one day I will become a counselor, and I will be one of the best in the field”
Now I had 2 in 1, I still wanted to be a counselor, but now I wanted to be on of the best in the field.
9 years in recovery passed, and I wasn’t yet a counselor, but I was on my way.
Today I am about (March) to do 11 years in recovery and I am a counselor, and I believe I am good at that, don’t know if one of the best in he field, lo
So why I am writing all of this????
Simple; this is exactly the message I carry to my clients - dream, dream, dream
It’s hard to this population to tell them to dream, because they are stuck.
So I decided if they don’t look for their dreams, I will bring the dreams to them.
So this is what I am been doing, bringing the dreams to them. I show them the cool things in life, like countries, traveling, successfully woman, I work on their strengths skills and show them what they can do with their skills and how.
I make sure that they know where they are good at, and how that can make them successfully.
See, the point of be an addict in recovery means that we become one of the most intelligent people in the world, and one of the most creative, and one of the most successfully people.
That is a fact!
If you do a survey you will see that an addict had move vantages than a “normal person”
Why?
Simple; because during the use we got survival skills, and then once in recovery we use those survival skills, and we add the new learn of life.
Also because we are very sensitive people that make us to be ahead…. We feel more, we understand more, we see life more.
We are more aware of life because one day we almost die
We feel more because we spent years high don’t feel anything
We are ahead because we exercised our brain to find ways and means to get what we wanted
We are more sensitive because we can feel the pain of other people….we have been there, in that pain, we recognize, we have compassion.
In other day someone told me “be an addict isn’t good in any way”
I looked at him and I thought “I can’t date this person, because he is an ignorant”
Be an addict is be what you can never be - a toll of God
We were chosen to carry his message, but for you to carry that message you need to know what you are talking about, and that’s why works, because we did that, we have been there, so we know what we are talking about.
I feel your pain, because your pain was my pain
That’s why I need to keep to tell my clients to dream, because isn’t nothing wrong to be an addict, is all good, and they can take advantage of that!
Keep dreaming for a better life
Some call this law of attraction
I call it HOPE!

The client that I dont understand

The client that I don’t understand!
So last Wednesday at staff meeting the other counselors told me that this client is mental hill, because they saw her talking by herself and laughing, and be space out.
Hello!!! I am been saying that for awhile. Ecstasy was one of her drug of choices.
This client doesn’t want to have anything, I say it gain, anything to do with her peers.
The client doesn’t talk to them AT ALL! The client is always by herself, in silence.
The peers just let her alone, so I see this client of mine spending hours and days without talking with anyone. She was clear when she said that she doesn’t want to talk with them, she fears them.
So I kept thinking, and thinking what can I do.
I am been spending my days looking at the client and trying to figure out what to do with her, how to gain her trust, how to make her connect with her peers.
Finally, my brain started to work this week.
I FOUND A WAY!!!!!
Yes cap locks because I am very proud of me.
I decided to use client strengths!
I remind that she told me that she went to dance school, so I called her in and I told her:
“Look I have a job for you. You are going to teach your peers how to dance. You are going to organize a dance team, and then you are going to present that to the directors.
The client jumped from her chair, happy like I never saw.
She stands up goes to group and announces them that every Saturday morning she will be teaching dance class. Here what she said, lol :
Saturdays we are going to dance, is healthy, and will keep you exercised”
Then she goes around the room giving HI5 to all of them, lol
So today I brought the music she asked me, and I brought also Madonna video for them to see the dancers.
So from 6.30 am until 8.00 am they saw it, and then at 8 am I asked the client to come and teach the class.
She said: I need 5 minutes to prepare myself”
LOL
After 5 minutes she came and the class started.
She laughs with them, she spoke with them, she asked for their advice, what moves to do, she followed suggestions of them, and she kept laughing and laughing.
The entire unit was with her, helping her, watching her, clap, calling her name, supporting her in an amazing. They were happy to do something for this client.
At the end she came at me and just gave me this big hug that took me by surprise!!!!
Conclusion:
I found a way to make this client interact with other peers. To connect with them.
I found a way for her to feel alive, and happy again.
I really hope this will work
This came from a movie I saw where this guy went to a mental institute, and he spent his days making the other clients laughing.
He was also sick, but he chosen to make the other laugh. Then he left the mental hill hospital and he decided to become a doctor. As an intern he would make the patients laugh, with his jokes, and be a clown.
Patch Adams (film)
I am doing exactly the same with this client.
Isn’t the client who need to adaptated to me. It’s me who need to adaptated to the client.

Rape

Rape
We have this new client on the unit who came from the other unit. This client was a cheerleader, and she is very expressive and vain. The way she walks and talks is very sexual, and vain. Today in the group she shared that she was raped 5 times.
5 times?????!!!!!
She got my attention! 5 times????
Hum, 5 times, really, lets see what happen.
She started to sharing saying “ I was a victim “
Please don’t get me wrong on this, and yes she was a victim, but lets see the behavior.
I asked her to tell me what happen in those 5 times. I found out those 5 times was always at parties. So I started to picture the image of that client in a party. How she acted.
In my mind I saw her wearing very provocative sexy clothes, and dancing in a very sexual way. I picture that in my mind because is like that she moves in treatment. But I asked her how she acted in those parties. She told me exactly what I thought.
Now this is what I told her:
“ look, you go to a party that you don’t know half of the people. You go very sexy, to make sure that you are going to be in spotlight. You get high and you start to dance in a very sexual way, teasing them. Guys will be guys, but the dangerous is that you just need one, just one of those guys who is there and hates his mother, or was bad treat by his mother to rape you. For him you become his mother - the woman he hates; you just need that one of this guys will be at that party ready to proof that they have the control over you by raping you. I am telling this in order you start to protect yourself.
Next time you go to a party make sure you watch people, before you start to dance. See if is safe, and protect yourself. don’t go and tease because is dangerous. If you do that make sure you always be ahead of them, not them ahead of you. When you go and you put yourself out there like you do, you are taking an unnecessary risk.”
She then she told me that her life story was 35 pages, and she had the need to put out there and get relieve.
My answer was:
“ 35 pages or 100 pages doesn’t tell me anything. What I want to know is, did you write 35 pages just to get immediate relieve and get approval, or did you write 35 pages in order to do something different with your life?”
That is the point! I am writing this for what? What I really want from here?
See that is always the question I make when clients come with, 30, 50, 100 page sof life story.
No, no, doesn’t impress me.
\in other day I told a client: maybe should let you read my life stor and lets see who has the worse life story.
The point here is, if you had a past with drugs your life wasn’t very good at that time, and that is a fact! But what is your real intension? What is your motivation behind that?
Just to think about.
Well I guess I am writing 2 topics in here, but let me go back to the first one. The conclusion of the first one is simple - respect yourself in order to gain respect.
You act sexual, you will get sex
You act respectful, you will get respect.
Wow I cant believe I am talking like that, lol
Jesus, maybe I learn something. Finally!

I don't understand this client

So I have this new client that I don’t understand, or for the first time I feel that I am complete powerless.
I keep looking at this client from my desk and wondering “ who is she?, how I am going to help her? What’s wrong with her?”
So I am going to start for what I got so far.
So lets go to the beginning.
The client is a drug addict child. The client was abandoned by her father. Her father never had contact with her. Her mother is a drug addict who left her with her grandmother, and vanish for the earth.
So the client was raise by her grandmother, witch I don’t believe was the perfect role model.
The reason I say this is because I normally associate drug addiction with toxic parents. Was her grandmother toxic? I didn’t get it yet.
The client grows up looking for worthy. She was in hall of the fame at her school. They client hates drugs addicts - she hates her mother.
The mother shows up later in her life and decided to use drugs with the client. Normally when children decided to use drugs with their parents is because they are trying to find a way to be accepted by their parents. They are trying to get their love back.
Moving on…. The client has this boyfriend who had become her best friend.
She gets pregnant and he promises to marry her.
The child borns, and the father disappears.
Ok, so now lets analyze this, and lets see how traumatic this was.
The most important people in her life left. The client suffered lost 4 times.
First lost - her first love - her mother
Like I wrote before our first love is our parents. They will decided in the future how we are going to be capable of love.
She looses her mother to drugs.
She loosed her father.
Then when she had hope about having her own family she looses it again!
Her boyfriend leaves her.
The child born and she feel the feeling of lost again.
I explain; when someone has a child, will become depress because once the child is out, is again another lost. We cannot forget that a mother carries a child for 9 months, and then is taking away from her inside. This means lost!
I know I am writing in a very confuse way, but I am sick, and its hard for me to think.
This was a very traumatic experiences for the client. BUT, why I am lost on this???
isn’t that normal with addicts????
Yes it is! And here is what I don’t understand!
Let me write how she behaves on the unit. She doenst speak with anyone. She refuses! She doesn’t ask for help; she is in silence all day.
She talks by herself. When she is in my groups I make sure that I bring the parents topic up and I look at her. Once they started to talk about parents she is gone! She looks at the air, and she isn’t in that group anymore. Her body is, but her mind is gone.
I started working with this client, pushing, pressure, and she reacted in anger, complete crazy against me. every time I would do it she would break down crying, and tell me how her past is still hurting her.
So I don’t know very well what to do with this client.
If I leave her alone she will spend her treatment in silence saying that everything is ok.
If a push her she will show me her pain.
So I don’t know, I just don’t know!