Welcome back and here we go. Hello Marcos, hi Nicole. You guys are doing amazing.
Three hours down. See how quick that went? It only seemed like five hours. We did it in three.
It was amazing. Now, you guys are doing a great job. Thank you. I appreciate all your comments and questions and being here. And all right.
How are you, Alonda? We've got Nicole, Janet, Marcos, Giovanni. Awesome. Hey, you guys are doing great. So, let me continue on here.
And we've already kind of looked at the principles. It says counselors are charged with several important responsibilities, all of which ultimately have to do with promoting client welfare. We talked about that. It talks about adhering to the code of ethics. There's not really codes of ethics.
There's the disciplinary guidelines that I showed you. Those are the ethics you're really adhering to the code of conduct. And, you know, being culturally sensitive. A lot of times, you know, sometimes certain practices are used in certain cultures or certain things like that.
So you just kind of want to be aware. I mean, I learned a lot of the cultural stuff I know. from other people obviously clients and and other counselors and other people with different experiences so always be open-minded go to our multicultural conference that we just had i mean if you missed it um we did virtually but it's so amazing i mean our team uh christina and pete and the rest of the team does such an amazing job of of putting um presenters together from special populations uh african-american and native american and criminal justice and LGBTQ and we had Irish and we had just so many different types of things. So our multicultural conference really talks about all that. I have a six-hour cultural competency training that I do for, because it's usually a mandatory training for a lot of counties and employees.
But I mean, we just have to be aware of all that. So as you go along your journey, things that you can learn or pick up or if you can ask questions if you have people that you know that you can maybe glean information from and they're willing to share with you then that's always good i mean anything you can put in your i really don't like saying tool belt because of your toolbox because it's so cliche but basically anything you can put in your your you know your little toolbox to uh you know that will help you never know when things are going to pop up and i've got some we have a lot to cover so i won't go into it but i mean i've had some um very empowering and inspiring learning from from yeah bag of tricks there you go um sometimes clients and just other colleagues that uh you know like even our own multicultural conference i mean i'm so grateful and blessed to be part of an organization that does what we do. And I, you know, I get to be part of that.
And so after going to these multicultural conferences for the last six years, just seeing so many amazing presenters and it's amazing. So yeah, if you can, any of our conferences that you can get to, even you go to our CAC conference in San Diego this year on Students Day. Any exposure you can get to other professionals is just amazing.
Anyway, counselors will also attend their own well-being and evaluate their own effectiveness. So that can sometimes be difficult for us because it's going to sound funny or kind of ironic. But people, the hardest.
The people that have the most difficulty to change are the people that help people change. You know, we as counselors, even though we had to do a lot of changing to get where we are, once we're here, it seems like, oh, I know, I know. Or we don't want to show any kind of vulnerability.
And your vulnerability is going to be your best asset as a counselor as far as learning stuff, right? But we always, or I don't say always. We tend to believe that, oh, I'm in the position of helping now. I'm a helper. I help other people.
I don't need to change anything. I don't need to help. But like I said, I've been doing this 20 years.
Every, like I said, pretty much every position and modality that you could work in, I've done it, except for youth. And, like, I haven't worked in schools. I haven't been a youth counselor or anything like that, but adult services. And I'm still learning. I still learn stuff.
And so just always continue to be open. Always continue to be open. Because once the pupil shows up, so does the teacher, right? So always be that pupil.
Yes, people are coming to you for help. And yes, you are going to school and you're doing all this training. But you should always be doing what's called introspection. And you're willing to take a look at yourself.
And even ask your supervisors and stuff. You know, how do you think I'm doing? And some things you might not notice. My supervisor, I was very grateful, noticed that when I was an intern and he said, do you know that you seem to work?
I can't remember if it was younger clients. It was 20 years ago. It was younger clients or older clients.
But he said, you know, you seem to work better with the older clients. I'm like, what does that mean? He said, I don't know.
He just, he just seemed to be more, more engaged and more relaxed with the younger or the older clients. And the, you know, like he was kind of saying like the younger ones irritated me more or something, or I wasn't as engaged. So then he said, so I'm going to give you all, you know, everybody that you're going to get from now is going to be 25 and younger. Okay. But you know, he was right.
Because the older clients were, usually meth and alcohol and the things that I had done and the younger clients that were coming at that time it was just right at the beginning of the opioid crisis were coming in on oxycodone and seemed to have a lot of entitlement to me and draining their parents bank accounts and they were there because their parents were paying for them and and you know I don't need to listen all these old people out here they're all trying to tell me what to do and I don't need to listen to them and they just a lot of times were very resistant and and i was a young counselor and so i was like oh this person doesn't want to do this you know and i was just kind of i did i was different so he said you know you need to be objective and you need to be you know and he was right i didn't know i was doing it though so it was a it was very eye-opening and i was very grateful for it um because he gave me some insight and some some introspection on how I was acting. He also pointed out that when the parole agents would call, I would hang up and he said, you just were, you were just talking to a female parole agent, huh? And yeah, how do you know?
He said, because when the female agents call you talk differently. I said, what? And he was like, yeah, when they call you're like, Hey, how you doing? What's up?
You know? And when the guys call you, Hey, what's up? You know? Um, And so he's just pointing out these little things.
They weren't good or bad, positive or negative. They were just, it's just behaviors that he was noticing. And he was just trying to teach me to be consistent and to be objective.
And to, and like I said, you're going to, you're going to have clients that for one reason or the other, you're just going to like them more than others. They're more receptive or they're just nice or they're whatever, but it's just human nature. But we just have to always be looking at that. Be aware. Be aware of your effectiveness.
If you start leaning towards one way or the other, either negatively or positively with a person, you just can't be effective. If there's somebody you don't want to have conflict with because you like them and they seem pretty compliant, well, when they do something wrong, you're not going to, you might be hesitant to call them on their stuff because, yeah, constructive criticism. Yeah, I mean, that's great. That's why you guys are doing what you're doing. That's why you got to get the 3,000 hours.
That's why you got to get the crisis intervention. All the 12 core functions, all the different things. That's what's going to make you a good counselor. Not being insecure.
I mean, you don't want to be insecure. Oh, God, if I go to my supervisor and I admit that I need help or I don't know what I'm doing, that they're going to think I'm not capable of doing this job. And so, you know, that's what happens a lot of times.
when you do that you miss opportunities to learn you miss up you know to go to a somebody who's been doing this a long time that's your that's agreed to be your supervisor that has agreed to invent it's not a small task to take on an intern because you're you know and you may or may not know this either that if if i agree to be your supervisor as an intern and you do something unethical that my certification is at risk, all right? So when someone says, yes, I'd love to bring you as an intern, and I'm going to guide you, and I'm going to, that's huge, all right? So, and you may never get that opportunity again.
It's like I tell people that used to come into treatment, you know, when in your life have you had the opportunity to just work on you? to just be in a residential treatment for 90 days, and all you have to do is work on you. Everything else is taken care of.
Oh, my family, you know, they need me there. You weren't there anyway. You were high.
You were out in the garage playing darts, or you were passed out. You've been missing holidays and everything. You haven't been taking your kids anywhere.
You've been selfish and self-centered for the last five years, so stop. Be here. Be in the moment.
And so for you as counselors, that's the same thing. Please ask your supervisors and your mentors for advice. It's OK.
It's OK. You know, what should I do in this situation? A lot of times you're going to be with them, but hopefully they're going to be guiding you.
So important. Like I said, 20 years now, I'm still getting guidance. And I'm hardheaded sometimes. And so sometimes I have to be put back on the right lane.
Like my sponsor told me, if everything's coming at you, you're in the wrong lane. What to avoid? Don't tell someone you understand. Don't tell someone to calm down.
Don't tell someone if it's going to be okay. And don't put words in people's mouths. If you tell somebody you understand, even if you do or if you don't, I mean, they don't really, that's not what they want to hear, you know. And there's plenty of situations where I didn't understand.
I would ask them, you know, ask them open-ended questions. Tell me more, you know. Help me understand how this is affecting you or, you know, whatever.
Not just yes or no questions. You can't tell someone to calm down if they're mad. I mean, they're not in a place where it's like, all right, well, just calm down. No, I'm not going to calm down. I'm mad.
I'm angry. I'm upset. I'm sad. I'm stressed. So you have to navigate with them through these situations to say, all right, calm down.
That's not a counseling technique. Calm down. And at the time when people are coming to us to tell them it's going to be okay is not what they want. should be hearing either. And sometimes I can tell people like they want to say something, but they're afraid to because they don't trust.
And sometimes I'll say, so what's right here? Or if they cry, I'll tell them it's okay to cry because you're not going to cry forever. Get it out.
Or what's right here? What are you not saying? Part of what you guys are going to be paying attention to is what they're not saying, right?
What's between the lines? And ask them if they tell you something, don't put words in their mouths and make assumptions. But say, you know, reply with something like, so what I hear you saying is this.
They may say, yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. And they may say, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. So you can reframe it or put it back to them and have them explain it to you in a different format.
All right. So. And even if you haven't been through what they've been through, you can help them. Right?
Each group, I usually tell this story where... I had a guy come in. I was probably a counselor.
I feel like you can become robotic where everything sounds the same. You've ever experienced that a client may find you're not being genuine. Well, nobody's ever told me that. I don't know if anybody's felt that, Yolanda.
I always try. I mean, that's a great point, though. Thank you. Authenticity and genuineness are very important to the clients.
And that's why. I mean, you don't want to become robotic. You want to be. That's why active listening, repeating what they're saying so that they know that they're being listened to, so that they feel that you genuinely care about them.
They're not just another person sitting at your desk that you need to chart on. And there's so many different things. But, I mean, a lot of times it's active listening.
And like I said. Paying attention to the body language, what's not being said. I had a client, I was probably like three years as a counselor. I had a client come in and he was institutionalized. I don't know how long he'd been in prison, but for quite a while.
And he had that kind of tough, guarded. personality that you might expect someone to have coming from that kind of environment. He was referred by parole and he came in, he sat down and he had the bell-bottom jeans and the, I don't like to say it, but the tank, the white tank top that people call it, the initials are WB, but I don't like to say the words.
And you know the feathered hair and the mustache and you just kind of had that that look, you know It was very not smiling not anything and I said hey welcome to you know, XYZ recovery. I'm Craig I'm gonna be your counselor. I'm gonna do your intake and welcome and he says stop What do you mean stop? He's you ever been to prison?
No never been to prison He said, well, then you can't help me. And I said, oh, okay, really? So check it out. I'm not trying to help you go to prison. I'm trying to help you get sober.
So it doesn't really matter that I'm where you've been. It matters that I'm where you're trying to go. Hopefully, if that's what you want to do.
And he was like, wow, yeah. I do. And we kind of broke the ice right then because he knew he was being heard. You know, and I'll say it doesn't matter.
I mean, I still have empathy for where you're coming from, but I don't have to have walked exactly in your footsteps to help you because I'm trying to I'm trying to help you get to a different place. Right. So if you're authentic and genuine or if you listen to them and you and you respond.
appropriately or accurately or genuinely they're going to notice that. So that is a big, a big part of it. If they just think you're being robotic and doing the work, you know, doing the questions and you got to remember if you're doing addiction severity index or a or an ASAM or a CalOMS here in California, if you're doing these You know, these questionnaires, you know, you've known them 15 minutes.
You're like, okay, I'm going to ask you some questions. When was the last time you used? What's your primary drug of choice?
You've been in jail the last 30 days. We're asking them all these questions. They're like, I don't know you. And you're depending on a lot of self-reported information. You might even find out that a couple weeks later that it's like, okay, so you said when we did your intake, this, this, and this.
Yeah, well, then you find out inadvertently that. that wasn't true. So it's like, look, I listen to you.
I'm genuinely interested in helping you, but I can only help you with what you give me. I can only help you with what I have to work with. I can't work harder than you.
I mean, I can't help you if I don't have stuff to help you with. And a lot of times that genuineness does shine through. So more counseling tips. These are things you should check at the door. Your own personal biases.
You may have, and we all have them, right? We all have them. You can say, oh, I don't know.
I have no biases. I love everybody. I'm equal opportunity.
No, everybody has biases. Coming up with rash judgments about somebody because somebody came walking in, looking a certain way, talking a certain way, acting a certain way, and you pigeonhole them into this category. Remember, a lot of addicts and alcohol people that come into treatment are not representing who they actually are when they get there. When I went into treatment, I was 250 pounds now. I like to be like 235, 236. But when I went into treatment, I was like 180. And if you looked at me, I think I'd been homeless for the last 10 years and that I never owned a house and made $100,000 a year and had married my high school sweetheart and was living a great life.
You would look at me when I came into treatment. I had my driver's license from those days. And you look at it, I'm unrecognizable.
And so people would look at me then and go, oh, God, look at this guy. That wasn't who I was. That was my Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde guy.
That was the other side. Stereotyping somebody, lack of emotional control. In other words, clients are going to come in and challenge you. Clients are going to test you.
Clients are going to see what your skills are and see if they want to know, you know, is this person authentic? Is this person genuine? Is this person really give a hoot about, you know, whether I make it or not?
And remember, you're going to be a blip on the radar screen. What's the saying? You may.
The person who plants the seed might not ever get to sit under the shade of the tree, right? So that's us. You may get them 30, 60, 90 days when they're in their most vulnerable, low self-esteem spot in their life, right?
And they may call you five years later or 10 years later and say, I'm a doctor now. Or you may never hear from them again. You'll never know.
They may be in a... alumni and come back for alumni night or stop by. I used to love when an alumni would come by just out of the blue to say hi and tell me how they were doing. And I would say, you know, would you mind talking to the group?
Tell them how you're doing. Tell them how this, because that's the best example I have. You know, as a counselor, they look at us as, you know, okay, this guy's up there. He's got a job to do. He's handing me worksheets.
He's talking about this. I always say we're that, you know, sign in the road, life. death that's what counselors are rusty sign on the side of the road keep using and i can tell you how it's gonna end predictable ending not used and sky's the limit i can say that all day long i can stand up there and give them worksheets on guilt and shame and and relapse prevention and whatever but when a client ex-client former client i should say comes in and says you know when i came in i was at the bottom of the freaking barrel i was this i was that i wasn't working my family left me everything was this is all my story but someone comes in and says that it says you know but i came through here and i did this and i did this and i just now my life is so much better those testimonies are are um invaluable right that's what we're trying to create Is that trust?
So that those kind of messages get carried on and people are inspired to change. What you guys are going to be doing from the beginning. I mean, you may be the only person that ever gives them hope. The very beginning of the journey. When you boil it all down, our job is to give them hope.
They've been told they're whatever, losers. Everybody's left them. They've alienated everybody.
Even if they still have money and they still have stuff, emotionally, they're not there. If they come into you and you battle with them or get in some kind of emotional war with them, then that's not going to help them. Remember, you guys are models.
We're models of what we expect. our clients to do. Ethical behavior requires more than a familiarity with the professional's code of conduct, or code of ethics, excuse me, code of conduct now. But it still comes down to ethics.
I mean, you're not just following a typed-up sheet of the disciplinary guidelines or of ethical behavior. I mean, you're modeling it. You're... you're exuding it and all the stuff that you do that you're you're you're following your commitments if you say we're gonna have a one-on-one on wednesday at one then you're there and you're on time and you're fully ready to listen to them you get to work early you are consistent in your attitude and your behavior you show um empathy and genuineness and authenticity towards them so they're not sitting there feeling judged which is what most people have been doing to them for the last whoever knows how long till they got into treatment so they're scared and they're full of fear and here you are trying to give them hope not by saying well don't worry about it it's going to be okay that's what the treatment plans were You, we just, we work with them to decide what they want to work on. What do they feel they want to work on?
And say, oh, this is what you need to do. That does them no good. That's what people have been doing to them the whole time. Ah, you need to go to treatment.
Oh, hi, welcome back, Janet. You know, the whole you need to, you need to, you need to is just sets up the defense mechanism that people have been telling them for years. Most people don't go to treatment the first time it's suggested to them. So they've probably been hearing about all the things they need to do. Oh, you're good, Janet.
You're fine. Thank you for letting us know. You're going to be okay. Counselors need to develop a personal ethical sense that involves reflection and insight and ensuring the client's possible service to deliver their clients.
All right. So remember, reflection, reframing. presenting things in a way that we can move them from wherever they are emotionally, mentally or physically to a different place.
I mean, I know when I got to treatment, I was tired. I was skinny. I lost all my family. I had legal problems. I mean, it was just bad.
And to go to a place with a bunch of strangers that I didn't know where I was going to and to talk with, you know, these people, and it's kind of like, ah, whatever. But they assured me. They were showing me ethical stuff. Now, I will say this. One of the reasons that I'm so intrigued by and put so much dedication into learning ethics is because I had a female counselor at an all-men's facility who ended up quitting because she dated one of our clients.
She was my primary counselor. And I was kind of like, wow, she just has to quit like that? I didn't know.
I was a client. I actually had moved on to like I was like the volunteer staff at the time, but I just started asking a lot of questions. And I started figuring, wow, there's a lot to all this ethics.
Oh, my goodness. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on. But it was my own personal experience that with the counselor and their behavior that made me question what we're supposed to be doing as counselors. I didn't even plan on being a counselor.
My executive director came and said to me, have you ever thought about being a counselor? because we'll bring you in as an intern and you can live here while you go to school and uh and i was like really oh that sounds great and i just took to it like i loved it but i also saw some stuff that wasn't right we had gas pumps in the back and i saw some of the staff filling their cars with the gas pump people were taking food from the kitchen i was like these people are not Ethical. These people are not in integrity.
So I made it my mission at that point to make sure that I was always trying to show the best possible service to the clients, that I was going to be an integrity, and I was going to, like it says here, develop that ethical sense of how I behaved and what I modeled. process for ethical decision making. So sensitivity to the moral dimensions of counseling. This includes not only professional ethics but also personal principles and philosophy consistent with the profession.
So remember I talked about being congruent. The words coming out of your mouth should match your behaviors. It's that simple. If you're saying one thing and doing another, that doesn't line up.
So If you're telling them to be on time, you know, it's unacceptable for you to be late to group, late to breakfast. You should be here. You know, if they're standing in front of your office, if you're doing outpatient and you get there 20 minutes or five minutes late, they're standing there. And you come, oh, sorry about this. Sorry about, oh, yeah, you know, my daughter needed to get to school.
Oh, band practice. Oh, this, this. Okay, they don't want to hear all that.
Because the next time they're late, you're going to be like, hey, you know. We had an agreement. You have to be at this time. This is, you know, this is my time.
So, you know, we have to, and it's hard. I mean, it's not hard, but I mean, we have to always live up to the standards and the expectations that we're trying to get our clients to understand. Need to be able to identify the type of category of dilemma and alternative courses of action.
That's where your supervisors come in now. deciding the level of a situation and what your alternatives might be. Like it says, who do I need to call about this? Do I need to do anything about this? I've had people that have gone through full-blown mental breakdowns.
I had my supervisor come get me out of group. I had a client that he had a sweater on. He was convinced that his sweater had speakers in it, and he was hearing lots of voices, and he told our director that he would only talk to me. And he was shut down. He wouldn't talk to anybody else but me, and they came and got me out of group, and they were like, he's saying he'll only talk to you.
He only trusts you. Okay. So he had somebody else come in the group, and I went and talked to him, and when he saw me, he was opened up. I was able to get him to the help that he needed, but it was like, okay, what is the level of this? What is the dilemma?
What are our choices? Do I need to call 911? Can I put him in a van safely and get him to mental health?
Do we need to not do anything right now? Threatening people, I got to call the police. I mean, what's going on? So there's lots of situations that you have to be able to. Look at it, analyze it, and get into the solution pretty quickly.
And refer to your code of conduct. It says ethics, but refer to the code of conduct and your guidelines for assistance, you know, and to your supervisor. Exam the relevant federal and state regulations and case law for additional guidance. So you always want to be aware of who you can say what.
to and what you can say to them. What are the regulations in a certain situation? You want to be aware of the law. Because there's some things, like if you get into somebody with HIV or AIDS, there's a Ryan White law, there's a federal law that is very specific about, you're not supposed to talk to your colleagues about that.
And I've got some ethical dilemmas that I've been in. due to that. Just because of relationship stuff and things I couldn't say to other parties. But you have to be aware of confidentiality, 42 CFR, HIPAA, Title IX.
There's lots of things that we have to be looking at. Examination of relevant ethics literature for perspective. Literature is very important.
The stuff that's written down is very important. I mean, I think you should all get a copy of the 12 core functions. It breaks down each, you know, orientation and intake and all the different parts, all the core functions of being a counselor. So that's a great tool.
You should get Ethics for Counselors. There's a book Ethics for Counselors for the drug and alcohol counselor. So you have a good understanding of ethics. Literature part is very important.
What's also important is your experience. You can't teach experience. So experience is going to play into a lot of the decisions you make and a lot of the times, you know, if you're not sure what to do. Sometimes you just have to think on your feet. As executive director, I had staff that was overnight staff there, and they'd call me at 1 in the morning.
Yeah, this guy just threatened this guy, and he says he's going to kill him, and, you know, what should we do? Well. Get them out of there.
So I would always tell my staff, just make the best decision you can at the time, and then we'll figure it out. Nothing's really going to get us shut down. So there are times when things have to be decided on pretty quickly, but hopefully that's based on your coaching, your ethical experiences, your common sense.
the things that you've read and studied. I mean, you should be putting time into reading and studying a lot of this stuff. How would I put it?
Hone your craft. Become a specialist at what you do. For me, it's ethics.
I'm not an attorney, not even close, but ethics and law. that have to do with counseling has always just intrigued me and also the brain how the brain works that's something that's put a lot of energy into the addiction in the brain is just intriguing to me so i got books on it and i read them and i watched stuff and i i asked questions to people at conferences and i was lucky to have some very good mentors that knew confidentiality inside and out So don't just do the minimum. Application of fundamental philosophical principles and theories to the situation.
Theories, philosophy, all that stuff is very important. Okay, so all of that stuff was, all the stuff you're reading is written by the people that decided to write it down. The people with the pen, okay, and that's very important. you know a lot of it's proven but when you're in front of a person in crisis or you're in a situation that's like right now you can't hey hold on with your crisis okay so that i can look back at my ethical guidelines book and see what i'm supposed to do right here um so yes theories principles philosophy very important we need to know all that to pass the test and to get the wallpaper up on the wall and get the letters after our name and all those kinds of things However, when you are put in a real-life situation with somebody across from you that's in crisis, you're going to be depending on what you know, your ethical, what you've learned, what you've been taught, what you've experienced, what you've seen, okay? Consultation with the colleagues about the dilemma.
That's right. Go to your supervisors. Hey, this happened.
What would you do? Observe how other people handle stuff. Observe how your supervisor handles things that come in. The only way I got to be executive director at the treatment program that I worked for was because while I was interning, I paid attention to how the people that were much smarter than me or much more experienced than me made their decision.
Okay, and I still do that. I do that at CCAP. They're smart people working at Seacat. Yeah, I get to do what I get to do and I love it.
And sometimes people come to me, but I'm also learning all the time. So because there's people that know a lot more about things than I do and not just in counseling, just in in different categories. I wouldn't be able to do this presentation or do all the stuff I've been doing from home for five months if, if.
Larry didn't have some patience or if Pete, our CEO, I didn't just wake up one day and know how to run Demio and do all this stuff. I mean, yeah, I went and bought the computer. I'd already had the computer and I have internet and I was, you know, some skills. It's the same thing when you're counseling.
You don't know what you don't know. So, you know, if you think of, you know, if you think of your life as a pie or the information that you know is a pie. you know the the little slice of the pie the stuff that you do know is very small and you're trying to take the stuff that you don't know which is the bigger starts to expand that graphic so that's always what we're doing what do we don't know put it into what we know now we know that now we know that now we know that all right so consult with your colleagues talk to people if you get an opportunity to go to a conference or or and you can build relationships with people, do that. Ask questions.
I'm so grateful for those people in like each modality, like they're sober living professionals. I know doctors that are so smart about how the brain works and all those things about addiction and ethics. And people want to share stuff.
I mean, they want to. I want to. That's why I'm here. Nobody wants to just be like, oh my God, I got all this information and you can't have it. We want to always make the profession better.
And you guys are our future workforce. So somewhere down the line, you're going to be certified and working somewhere and you might end up being an executive director or being a, I don't know what, who knows what all you guys are going to do. But eventually, you'd probably be supervising interns. And you're going to be telling them, ah, remember I just sat on the freaking computer with Craig for four hours one day and then five hours the next day.
And, oh, man, I remember those days. And they're going to be like, hey, they're going to be like all excited and saying, hey, can you supervise me? I need to get my stuff into CCAP. And I need this. I need you to sign up for my hours.
And I need this. And I need to sign up for this nine-hour course. It could be like, oh, yeah, I had to do all that. Yeah, yeah. Because you're going to pass it on.
And then they're going to pass it on. And so it's awesome. Awesome sauce.
All right. Some more ethical decision-making, deliberation through which counsel considers alternatives and develops a plan of action. Solution-oriented thinking, right?
No use living in the problem. What are my alternatives? What are we going to do?
What is the action going to be? Inform appropriate people, such as supervisors, in implementing the decision. So in any kind of decision that you're going to be making, you want to run it by, or even maybe even get input before you make the decision about from your supervisor. Because you may say, I think. or they may even put it on you put it in your hands and say well what do you think you should do you may tell them they say well that's good but what about this i mean they may have a suggestive need to fortify what you suggested or say well if you do that this is what's going to happen and that's not going to be good um so it's always good when we're early to run stuff by the supervisor i still run stuff by supervisor because i want to make sure that that The decisions that we make are in accordance with the philosophy of the agency and with going to help the client.
Remember, you're trying to help the client, but you also work for an agency usually, and you work for the profession, so you want to do what's best for everybody. And then reflect on the action, which allows counselors an assessment and affirmation of their ethical decision-making process. So you always want to review.
If you're like me, you're going to go home and think about it anyway. Oh, I should have done this. I should have done that. You know, I used to do paralysis by analysis, overthinking everything.
But you know what? It's all part of your learning process. It's all part of, you know, oh, I've been through this before, so this is what I need.
It's just like, like I said, it's like driving. First, you're very cautious. You've got both hands on the wheel. You know, you're.
Just trying to follow through and pretty soon you're leaning back, you got one hand on the wheel, you're running the stereo, you're on the phone trying to hide it, you know, you're getting more and more confident. So we just have to be aware that as we progress, we're going to be more comfortable in our decision making, but we always want to make sure that we're following or getting input or guidelines, guidance from our supervisors. All right.
What did I just do? All right. So we've got about five minutes here before we take a break, and then I think we're going to have a guest. Preventing litigation, the importance of advisement.
So there's going to be some situations where, you know, we're in a very litigious society. For those of you who don't know, lawsuits, litigation is lawsuits. And when people feel that they've been mistreated or something happened, they're pretty quick to file a litigation.
So what you have to do is make sure you have a good understanding of a lot of things and decision making so you don't end up in some kind of compromise situation in court. because like being a doctor or being anything else it's like oh yeah malpractice or whatever i mean i would suggest and it's a good idea as you move along in your career it might not be a bad idea to look up liability you know insurance for yourself just to cover yourself because if this has happened if you make if you do something that somebody sees as litigious and files a complaint that goes to court It's against the agency. I mean, the agency is going to be responsible for you.
You're going to be under the agency's insurance. But if they fire you for it, now you're not covered anymore. So, you know, it's like $100, $140 a year for good coverage, you know. So that's one of the benefits to being a CCAP member is that we have. connections with insurance providers and things like that that can, you know, just to protect yourself.
It's just a good idea. You don't think that would ever happen until it does. Okay, so it looks like I saw somebody pop on there.
Let me see here. Give me one second. Okay guys, so we're gonna stop right there as far as today goes.