To have a meaningful life and career

I was given this phrase "Break downs lead to break throughs" my first night of massage school. We were told to trust in the process and allow our emotions to surface when they did, if they did, and a break through would come to us. I believe this with my whole being. It was one of the best pieces of advice I was ever given.

I am now a counselor and work in community mental health.  The graduate program I went to for this education didn't really get me the license I originally wanted (licensed professional counselor.) I hemmed and hawed until I had to get the Licensed Associate Substance Abuse Counselor. I tried to return to school to get the extra classes I was deficient in in order to get the LPC, but it was not cost effective. I literally needed another year and a half. I took most of them, but ran out of money and patience.

After many years of blame and shame about that snafu I decided to apply for a doctorate and just stop worrying about the LPC board in my state. The program sounded like a great idea. Doctoral level clinicians in Primary Care offices. I would work with ordinary people with ordinary issues that had real insurance companies and not the state HMO. I was very excited. I applied and was accepted. And then I dug a little deeper and found out that 1) the program would not give me any license or certification. 2) in order to get a higher level license that would allow me to practice privately and not in a state agency I would need to take those classes I needed. 3) the college I was accepted at would not allow me to take the extra courses because one of the two was for students in that program only. And finally 4) there was an obnoxious program fee per credit hour attached. Essentially, a $40,000 doctorate became an $80,000 doctorate with out licensing, certification, or a Ph.D. or Psy.D. to go along with it. I would have been bonkers to accept that program. I declined it.  If I was going to spend $80 grand on an education I was going to get more out of it then an over priced cap and gown or dinner after graduation. A vacation to Fiji still would not have sufficed.

After declining and withdrawing from the college I came to terms with the fact that I had to stick it out and deal with what I had been licensed in. I did. I am a born try-er. I will try most things if there is some logic behind it and at that time there was. I went to work each day, I worked hard, I was a team player and I trained each doctoral level intern that came into our office on their residency rotations. I ran groups. I met clients  for individual sessions.I also struggled to keep my head above the rising tide of cruddy paperwork that continued to flow in from the state and feds. I still do all this. I love many parts of my job, but I am finding that the more that I do the same thing every day, week, month, and year the less I am growing and that is a problem. Another wonderful piece of advice was " when you are not learning anything or being challenged find something else to do." I heard this in graduate school, it was directly related to counseling.

Everyone needs growth in their lives. And growth is tension (another great piece of advice from my current boss.) If we do not have challenges or some tension in our lives we become stuck in our ways. Our trains of thoughts become so ingrained that we have difficulty breaking out of them and forming new pathways. The best and most glaring example is someone who is an alcoholic or drug addict. After years of abuse they have to first suffer through the physiological withdrawal stages of their addiction. Second, they have to accept and work with the biological and physical defects their use has left them with (including brain damage that may never repair itself.) Third, they suffer through the social issues that they have given themselves from their behavior when addicted. It's an awful lot of work for someone who spent years, maybe decades taking the easy way out. And Fourth, there is still the psychological damage, the trauma that living the life as one addicted to drugs or alcohol has to work through. And then imagine, if you can, the whole time they are working though all that other junk they have to fight moment to moment and day to day for their survival; their sobriety. You may not know that addiction is a progressive disease. It is. The brain is so warped by the drugs and/or alcohol that when they get some clarity they have to fight to keep it and still suffer through post-acute-withdrawal that could last up to or past 24 months from the time they stop use! That daily stress, tension, and pressure leads to some serious break downs which then can lead to break throughs. But again the pathways for their instinctual thinking are set, their behaviors, their go-to coping skills are all set and it is a brutal death match to choose the alternate direction.

Now, my job is no where near like being an alcoholic. Staying in the same career and same position forever are not as brutal as that either, but when those pathways are built and repeated for years and decades you get set in your ways pretty damned well.Some people think career changes or layoffs aren't that  tough, but if you have been doing the same thing for decades it is a frightening world out there.In a way our jobs institutionalize us and that is what I have seen occurring to me.

I am stuck in my ways. I have difficulty instituting new group or individual counseling rules, new processes at work are lost on me for a minute, finding new ways to see my clients and still do all I need to do to satisfy the state and continue to make productivity (the company) is a constant battle.  Hell, even my eating habits and waist line have suffered. I can't stay up past 9pm without being non-verbal and glazed. I wake up naturally  at 6:30am on Saturdays. I adapt to changes at work at a much slower pace because my brain is still stuck on how we did it for the last 2 years and now the state totally changes the whole game and things that were a slap on the hand are now sanction-able. It's horrendous and not the life I want. But for the last several years I have done it because it's just a part of life.  It's not any part of what I want my life to look like when I turn 40 and I am nearly there.

In a matter of speaking I had a break down. It was more of a realization,an epiphany. Emotionally, I felt like absolute garbage for about 3 weeks. I gave my boss the business for sending me to a training that was the same thing I have heard for the last 3 years when I go to that training. I've been watching my career eat my natural way of being in the world for years. And still, I just accepted it and then I received an email with a job opportunity in Portland, Oregon from a friend who is a Psychologist up there.

I had to think long and hard about when and if I could do take the national certification exam for SA counsleors, apply for Oregon licensure, apply for the job up there, interview and get hired and then move. Oy! That was a lot for my grieving brain to take in, but it all looked and sounded do-able over about a year year and a half.  My husband was ok with whatever I chose to do. It is something that could actually happen in the next year if I wanted it to, but I really do not want to just practice substance abuse counseling no matter where it is at. I want to move on to working in a more private setting where I don't have to just be a substance abuse (SA) counselor.Yes, I know SA is cross cultural and pretty much every one has a substance of choice that they rely on to bail them out, make them feel better about themselves, make them able to cope with crazy family, help them to cover up what they think is wrong with them. Substance Abuse is a fantastic foundation to start in, but it is not  my be all end all. 

Do I really want to move up there and have to re-do school so I can stop being a SA counselor? ugh. Even if there is some beautiful country and temperatures? Nope. But I do need a change. A  change in career is not what I am going to do, but it is time to deepen and enrich my skills and education to finally get that LPC and be able to practice mindfulness, EMDR, and DBT.

After that I may move , but currently I need to focus on one thing at a time for my career. First things first, get the loan to go back to school and take those last few courses.