I like knowing a little trivia. It’s probably related to wanting to maintain a positive view of myself. If I know a little trivia, maybe that makes me more competent.
Trivia of the day: Hardly any of you know that my friends Mike Bevill, Neil Balholm, Greg Hopkins, and I invented Karaoke in Mike Bevill’s basement back in 1974. Neil had a portable microphone system. We’d plug it in, put on background music, and belt out tunes, as if we were Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Bevill, Balhoum, Hopkins, and Sommers. We created a fake band, named ourselves the “Nugget Brothers,” and sang with great enthusiasm, but little talent, along with a variety of pop musicians.
One odd outcome of this was my continued preoccupation with creating fake bands into and after college, despite nearly complete lack of talent. As an example of the awkwardness of youth, I could “fake perform” to large groups, but I was unable to speak up in classes. Weird, I know. My guess is it was safer to publicly perform with no talent that it was to do so in areas where I was serious.
Here’s a photo attesting to my fake band performance legacy.
As a part of the Montana Happiness Challenge, we’ve been encouraging people to share their favorite songs. . . and now we’re taking it to the next step. Please, if you will, share yourself singing a song that makes you happy, or that you find meaningful. Post it on social media and give us a tag or hashtag: #MHPHappinessChallenge or #MontanaHappiness.
You may wonder, other than embarrassment and social media humiliation, what’s the point? The point is that singing is nearly always therapeutic, partly because of what’s happening in the brain. Think about it.
Singing involves movement, creativity, feedback and adjustment, listening, planning, memory, and language. Some researchers emphasize that singing triggers the release of the so-called “feel-good” neurotransmitter dopamine, which is a limited view, because there’s also more serotonin at the synapse, an oxytocin shower, and more or less involvement by 100s of other neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, and brain structures (including, but not limited to the hippocampus, insula, frontal lobe, Wernicke’s region, occipital cortex, and motor cortex). If you want to light up your brain, sing!
For the Montana Happiness Challenge, we highly recommend singing out loud. Although we would love to watch and listen to you singing on social media, if that’s not your thing, go ahead and sing in the shower, while housecleaning, in the car, or anywhere else you can let your joy happen.
One last point. Research on positive emotions indicate that we don’t need to have BIG positive emotions to experience happiness and well-being benefits. What’s important is to weave in many intermittent small positive emotions. IMHO, singing privately or publicly is one way to give yourself frequent positive emotional boosts.
For my part, I’ve recorded three videos on my social media singing. These videos are silly and embarrassing, which I’m completely embracing. I got nervous for each of these videos and didn’t even say all of what I planned to say. Feel free to skip them and/or #neverspeakofthem.
Thanks for reading this. Please share everything you can about the Montana Happiness Project. Our goal is to reach MANY people with free ideas about positive emotions and meaningful happiness.
Shortly after Beth Brown, Managing Director of Mental Health and Well Being at The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (https://blankfoundation.org/) called the meeting to order, she asked us to introduce ourselves and share one word to represent how we were feeling in that moment.
Having taught my fair share of group counseling and psychotherapy courses at the University of Montana, I immediately recognized Ms. Brown’s icebreaking trickery. The trickery is, while ostensibly asking about the emotional tone of participants, the “one word” question simultaneously evaluates participants’ ability and willingness to comply with group leader requests.
It was a raucous group. People immediately began bending, breaking, and straying from Ms. Brown’s one-word rule. Some participants took 30 words to introduce themselves; others took 50 words to frame the rationale for their one-word choice. One participant (who spoke second, and may or may not have been me), immediately displayed annoying attention-seeking behavior by interjecting an anecdote about the worst icebreaker activity ever in the history of time.
Had Sigmund Freud been a Mental Health and Wellness grantee (and therefore invited to the two-day event), he might have used the word delighted. Not only was the one-word activity intrinsically projective, Freud also once famously quipped,
Words were originally magic, and . . . retain much magical power, even today. With words people can make others blessed, or drive them to despair; by words the teacher transfers . . . knowledge to the pupil; by words the speaker sweeps away the audience and determines its judgments and decisions. Words call forth affects and are the universal means of influencing human beings [n.b., this is not a perfect quote because I engaged in minor editing to make Freud more quippy and less sexist].
I have some magic words to describe the participants. They were smart, fun, funny, dedicated, committed, clever, brilliant, generous, compassionate, empathic, connected, passionate, and cool. During Lyft rides, some of them even engaged with each other as if they were live podcasters. My particular program officer is so kind and generous that I now just think of her as Saint Natalie.
Words were the theme and the tool. On the afternoon of Day One Michael Susong, PR Lead at Intrepid, taught us how to use asset-based, instead of deficit-based words on our websites. His presentation was complemented by a gallery-walk through an adjacent room where life-sized word cloud posters of the words in our websites were set up and numbered; we perused the clouds, absorbing the language and seeking to discern which cloud belonged to which organization. I, of course, quickly found the Montana Happiness Project (MHP) word cloud, primarily because the biggest word was SUICIDE, which may or may not have implied that we (the MHP) have a bit of work to do on using more asset-based language on our website. I also felt jealousy because other organizations had way cooler words, like “Nintendo” and “LBGTQ+” and “Youth of color” and “Belonging.”
At the close of Day 1, the prevailing descriptive words were “Tired” and “Exhausted” not principally, but partly because this was a group of people who had likely added this retreat into their already too busy lives and consequently were emailing and doing business-related calls during breaks and lunch and on the airplane the day before and possibly into the night.
Looking back at the previous paragraph, I notice I used the word “business” which connotes a particular entrepreneurial feel, which requires a particular explanation. All of the organizations and people in attendance had a shared passion for the business of helping others achieve greater well-being, mental health, and happiness. IMHO, that’s good business. . . which leads me to sharing a few words about the man behind the curtain.
We all convened at the Arthur M. Blank Foundation headquarters for two days because of one man’s business. That man is Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, the Atlanta United professional soccer club, and PGA Superstores. But along with his businesses, Arthur Blank has expanded his service mentality into the business of philanthropy. On the evening of the first day, Arthur Blank joined us as we listened to renowned Harvard researcher Robert Waldinger talk about the world’s longest study of Happiness [n.b., in his usual buoyantly optimistic style, Freud once noted that a main goal of psychotherapy is to move patients from neurotic misery, to common unhappiness].
Although I didn’t get a chance to meet Mr. Blank and impress him with my witty repartee, knowledge of icebreakers, or arcane Freudian quotes (I wish I could have told him, “Where id was, there shall ego be!), I did hear him speak. In one long, hyphenated word, I’d describe his message as gracious-supportive-humble-encouraging-empowering. Had Freud been there, he might have just said, “Arthur Blank’s words were magic.”
The Arthur Blank Foundation has given well over $500 million to philanthropic causes. None of this is required. Arthur Blank could take his money and keep it to himself and his family. Instead, he has embraced philanthropy. Arthur Blank also has a book titled “Good Company.” In a word (or maybe 20 words), if I were offering a New York Times Book Review (which will never happen because the NYT always rejects my editorial pieces, and yes, I’m clearly hanging on too tightly to my resentment toward the NYT), I’d describe his book as: A rather surprising treatise on companies doing values-based good work in the world as a part of a larger philosophy/vision of service-oriented capitalism paradoxically infused with egalitarianism in the workplace. In other (or additional) words, I enjoyed, appreciated, and valued the book and its philosophy WAY more than I expected. Now I want to become as wealthy as Arthur Blank so I can join him in contributing to the culture and welfare of places like West Atlanta, South Chicago, North Philly, Livingston Montana, and East Missoula.
In the end, Beth Brown asked us for a final, departing single word. I cleverly used my hyphenated last name as an excuse to say “overwhelmed-hopeful” but I might have just as easily used “connected-inspired” or “challenged-to-do-more-good” or “I’m-on-a-rocket-ship-headed-to-a-city-called-mental-health-and-wellbeing” or, given the fire of inspiration lit under my feet, I could have decided to demonstrate the worst icebreaker of all time, and just spell out my name and feelings with my hip movements.
Thank you, Arthur Blank, thank you to the AMBFF team, and thank you to the grantees. I am humbled by your generosity and vision of greater mental health and wellbeing for all.
John Wiley and Sons recently informed me of the excellent and exciting news that the 7th edition of Clinical Interviewing (CI7) has gone to press and will drop in the U.S. on or before September 30. Our wish for this edition is the same as previous editions: To provide research-based, theoretically supported, clinically insightful, and culturally informed education and training on how to conduct basic and advanced clinical interviews.
The Resource
Part of CI7 includes video updates. Most of the updates offer greater representation of culturally diverse counselors and psychotherapists. For example, the video link below features Dr. Devika “Dibya” Choudhuri describing a “grounding” technique that she uses when conducting tele-mental health (aka virtual) clinical interviews, the topic of Chapter 14.
Although you may have your own approaches to facilitating grounding during tele-mental health sessions, I believe Dr. Choudhuri’s idea is innovative and may be a resource that you can add to your toolkit.
Stay tuned, because over the next several weeks I’ll be posting additional fresh new text and video content from CI7.
The Request
Traditionally, publishers ask authors to gather promotional endorsements for new books. This time around, maybe because it’s the 7th edition, neither Wiley nor the absent-minded authors of CI7 thought about gathering endorsements. In the past, we’ve had Derald Wing Sue, John Norcross, Victor Yalom, Pamela Hays, Barbara Herlihy, Allen Ivey, David Jobes, and Marianne and Jerry Corey write short blurbs. Here’s what Derald Wing Sue said about the 6th edition:
The most recent edition of Clinical Interviewing is simply outstanding. It not only provides a complete skeletal outline of the interview process in sequential fashion, but fleshes out numerous suggestions, examples, and guidelines in conducting successful and therapeutic interviews. Well-grounded in the theory, research and practice of clinical relationships, John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan bring to life for readers the real clinical challenges confronting beginning mental health trainees and professionals. Not only do the authors provide a clear and conceptual description of the interview process from beginning to end, but they identify important areas of required mastery (suicide assessment, mental status exams, diagnosis and treatment electronic interviewing, and work with special populations). Especially impressive is the authors’ ability to integrate cultural competence and cultural humility in the interview process. Few texts on interview skills cover so thoroughly the need to attend to cultural dimensions of work with diverse clients. This is an awesome book written in an engaging and interesting manner. I plan to use this text in my own course on advanced professional issues. Kudos to the authors for producing such a valuable text.
―Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
This time around, we’re less than two weeks from publishing and are without formal endorsements. As a consequence, I’m asking: “Is there ANYBODY out there who has read a portion of the CI7 manuscript or used a previous edition, who would like to share their thoughts about how the book influenced you or how the videos helped with your training?
[I know this last paragraph sounds pathetic. However, if you know me, you probably know my sense of humor, and the “Is there anybody out there?” call is BOTH a sincere request for your input AND me mocking myself for making this request.]
To be completely serious: If you want to share something positive about your experience—from any point in time—with the Clinical Interviewing text, I hope you’ll write a sentence or two or three (you don’t have to write half a page, like Derald Wing Sue) on the particular ways in which you found the book and/or videos meaningful to you.
To share your thoughts on any edition of the text, please post them here on this blog, or send them to me at john.sf@mso.umt.edu.
Thanks very much for considering this request. Please, please, I hope someone “out there” is listening!
I’m taking the opportunity this fine Sunday afternoon to post a blog piece that Rita wrote earlier this week. Oddly, or perhaps not that oddly for those who know her, Rita has an alter-identity that she refers to as “Dr. Bossypants.” In this alternate voice, Rita refers to herself in third person and lets herself be a bit more pedantic than she is in real life.
In this blog post, Dr. Bossypants jumps into the domain of forgiveness and offers up ideas that I found exquisitely interesting and very helpful.
Without further ado, I’d like you to meet, my friend, Dr. Bossypants.
Turns out, yesterday was Tuesday, not Friday. I got so disoriented yesterday that by the day’s end, I was emailing people and telling them to have a great Labor Day weekend. My excuse is that I got 17 new stitches in my forehead during a 4.5 hour marathon Mohs surgery on Monday. Sheesh. Now I’m a poster-boy for sun block. See the photo at the bottom of this post for the evidence.
I’m posting today (Wednesday, not Saturday!) to let you know about a unique opportunity, and to ask for your support.
Beginning this September (National Suicide Prevention Month), the Montana Happiness Project, L.L.C., in collaboration with Families First Learning Lab, is launching a 20-week Happiness Activity Challenge. Using various social media platforms, this campaign guides participants through 20 distinct evidence-based positive psychology interventions designed to increase personal happiness and life meaning.
This Campaign will be available for free, online, through social media. Because we’re offering it for free, we’re looking for two levels of support.
Collaborator: Being a collaborator costs you nothing. All it means is that you’re publicly saying that you support our efforts at spreading evidence-based happiness and will share our happiness activities with colleagues, friends, and perhaps formally engage your organization to participate. If you’re a collaborator, we’ll put your name or organization name and logo on our website.
Sponsor: We’re asking specific organizations to partner with us to sponsor each week. To sponsor a week, we ask for a $500 contribution. In return, we’ll include your Logo and our Thanks in our social media posts for the week. This will include posts on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, WordPress, and on our Squarespace Montana Happiness Project website. If you’re a sponsor, we’d love for you to encourage your staff to participate in this happiness promotion activity, talk about it with each other, and post about it on social media.
You may wonder, if we can be collaborators and my staff and colleagues can participate for free, why be a sponsor? That’s a great question. We’re doing our Happiness Challenge as an act of kindness for the people of Montana and beyond and acts of kindness are evidence-based happiness strategies. We hope you’ll join us, perform an act of kindness, and sponsor at least one homework week.
Whether you’re a collaborator, sponsor, or evesdropper, we hope you’ll engage with our happiness challenge to see if participation in some or all of our 20-day happiness project helps you (and your staff, friends, family, etc.) feel happier.
Below, I’ve answered a few questions:
Who can participate? – Anyone. Our primary focus is Montana, but our goal is to reach out and promote positivity and happiness to anyone and everyone who is interested.
Howmuch does it cost? – Nothing. Nada. Nil. This is free because we believe life is hard and people need support, skills, and to have hope for greater happiness.
Do I have to commit to all 20 homework assignments? – Nope. We’re doing this on social media. You can participate as much or as little as possible. You can be explicitly active by posting and sharing about your experiences, but you can also keep your experiences to yourselves.
Are the homework assignments really evidence-based? – Yes. Nearly all of the assignments have direct scientific support as “interventions” that increase happiness and decrease depression. That doesn’t mean increased happiness and decreased depression are guaranteed, because even “effective” interventions don’t work for everyone. . . but they’re worth a try. A few of the assignments don’t have direct experimental support, but they’re based on concepts shown to increase happiness and meaningfulness.
What’s the catch? – No catch. We’re offering this experience as an act of kindness because we think it’s a good thing. We also recognize that positive psychology or evidence-based happiness interventions are not a great fit for everyone. Just do what you can when you can if you can.
How can I contribute to the idea of sharing evidence-based happiness knowledge and skills? – We hope you will do this activity with co-workers, friend, and/or family. We hope you’ll share it on social media, or talk with your children about your experiences over dinner. If you’re especially inspired by our 20-week Happiness Challenge, you’re welcome to donate (not required, but appreciated) to Families First Learning Lab. Just let the good people at Families First know that your donation is to support the FFLL Happiness Project.
I’d end with “Mark your calendars!” but given that I’m still not certain that I’m fully oriented to time, I’ll just say, thanks for reading all this and considering full engagement with our Happiness Challenge.
Last week I did a little cliff-jumping into the Stillwater River with my twin 13-year-old grandchildren. It was only about 20 feet, but high enough to feel the terror and exhilaration of a brief free-fall.
This week I’m having a different kind of buzz. Dr. Margaret Rutherford reached out to me with a link to her TEDx Boca Raton talk. Previously I was a guest on her video podcast show (here’s the link to her podcast page: https://drmargaretrutherford.com/podcast-2-2/, and a link to her website and book, “Perfectly Hidden Depression” https://drmargaretrutherford.com/perfectlyhiddendepressionbook/). We’ve stayed in touch via email. Along with her link, she apologetically noted that she “barely” got a plug in for my work on strengths-based suicide assessment. I thought it was incredibly nice for her to give a nod, even a brief one, to my work. But then I watched and discovered that she had only mentioned three professionals: Edwin Shneidman (the “Father of Suicidology), Sidney Blatt (a renowned suicide and depression researcher from Yale), and some obscure guy from the University of Montana (that would be me).
Aside from feeling honored, humbled, and flattered to even get a mention, Dr. Margaret’s talk is fantastic. She makes the point–with a couple of articulate cases–for moving away from a strictly medical model perspective and toward working with people who may be suicidal through a lens of no judgment and acceptance. Here’s the link to her talk, which is well-worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXZ5Bo5lafA
There are other signs that how professionals (and hopefully the public) view suicidal ideation and behavior may be shifting toward greater acceptance. I’ll go into these other signs in a future post, but right now I want to emphasize that the point is not to replace the medical model, but to move the needle toward less pathologizing and more acceptance of the fact that having suicidal thoughts is often a normal part of life. To the extent that we can approach people who are thinking about suicide with, as Dr. Margaret said, “non-judgment and acceptance,” the more likely they are to be open with us about their pain. . . and . . . when people are open about their pain and suffering, then we have a chance to listen with empathy and a greater opportunity to be of help. . . which, I think, is the main point.
Earlier this summer, as I sifted through page-proofs for the 7th edition of our Clinical Interviewing textbook, my wife and co-author thinned carrots in the garden. Later, while I responded to queries from a Wiley copyeditor in India, she worked on rock art near the river in the July sunshine.
As many of you know, Rita and I have been co-authors for decades. Our first co-written publication appeared as a commentary in the 1986 American Psychologist (volume 41), titled “Ethical considerations for the peace activist psychotherapist.” Cool stuff.
Over the past few years, Rita’s interest in academic writing has waned some, but she’s still helpful, so I don’t mind. I like fresh carrots. The problem is that she’s started a project with a new and far more demanding coauthor. Given the identity of her coauthor, it doesn’t work for me to be jealous. Eight years ago, she started publishing these co-authored works as blogs, posted every Sunday at 9am. When she’s in a good mood, she refers to them as prose poems, prayers, or parables. I won’t mention what she calls them when she’s in a bad mood.
When she and her other co-author are busily writing, I’ve learned it’s best to not interrupt. I’ve also learned—from reading these blogs and listening to her read them to me—about a big omnipresent challenging and empathic entity that changes identities from Black women to dust mites, clouds to cracks in the earth, and flocks of birds to herds of sheep in much less time than the colloquial blink-of-an-eye.
Many of her readers have noted that these meditative word-art pieces are best taken in small doses. David James Duncan, author of The Brother’s K, the River Why, the forthcoming Sun House, and other amazing novels, wrote a blurb about Rita’s work, featured on the back cover:
From paragraph to paragraph, or sometimes sentence to sentence, or even phrase to phrase, Rita Sommers-Flanagan’s visitations leap—with tireless wit and a welcome downpour of surprises—from trenchant, to despairing, to startlingly funny, to furious, to honest to God divine comforts that just carried me to page 90 when I needed to get to work! As you read, you’ll also ride two pendulums I love, from reverence to irreverence back to reverence, and from deep grief to genuine joy back to grief. Most of all I want to say this: No matter what guise Original Source uses for any particular visit, I believe in Rita’s God. I truly do.
As I mentioned on FB, Rita getting a blurb from DJD makes me flat-out jealous. I still remember reading The Brother’s K on an airplane, and having the flight attendant check on me because I was intermittently laughing and crying. . . which speaks to DJD’s immense writing talents. On the other hand, rather than a bitter jealousy, I can bask in Rita’s reflected glory, right? I mean, after all, I’m her other coauthor.
I hope you’ll check out Rita’s book. I AM one of her biggest fans and one of her biggest coauthors: I’m just not the only one.
Like many, I woke up this morning thinking about my father (Max Sommers).
When I saw a photo of him, it made me think about how long it has been since I’ve seen him standing up. For the last 3+ years of his life he was in bed, due to an un-repairable broken hip and severe neuropathy.
Despite being stuck in bed every day, Max stayed upbeat. Every visit—until he died—started with a cheerful greeting and ended with him saying, “I love you” and “big hugs.”
I could never maintain such a sunny disposition. Here’s what I wrote about him back in 2014:
This is the man I can never live up to. But that’s okay. That’s the way it SHOULD be. To have a role model who is really a role model because he is so good and kind and compassionate and smart. Just being around someone like him makes me want to be a better person.
Reflecting on my father’s metaphorical (not literal) big shoes, made me think of Adler’s concept of the inferiority complex. Adler says inferiority is all-natural, because all children experience many years of being inferior to their parents or older siblings. I also had the good luck of having two incredibly competent and capable older sisters. I experienced many years of natural inferiority. That’s probably why, in most situations and most of the time, my first reactions usually involve feeling inferior.
Nowadays, people seem to use the term imposter syndrome instead of inferiority. I like Adler’s terminology and explanations better.
Adler also said the cure to all mental health problems was a thing he called encouragement. Encouragement comes in many forms. When parents and others give their children encouragement, it translates into giving their children the “courage” to face and embrace the challenging tasks of life. Given that Max was and is impossible for me to live up to, I’m especially lucky that he gave me the gift of encouragement. His encouragement (along with my mom’s and sisters’) gave me the courage to face my feelings of inferiority.
Max has been gone for 13 ½ months now. I miss him terribly. I know I’m not the only one feeling sad and grateful on Father’s Day. If you’re feeling the pangs and pains of loss along with me, I wish you as much peace, purpose, and encouragement as you can find.
Hardly anyone with common sense or social skills ever argues about whether or not relationship factors are crucial to effective counseling and psychotherapy. Nevertheless, some scientists are reluctant to put relationship factors on par with counseling and psychotherapy techniques or procedures. IMHO, relationship factors are every bit as essential as so-called empirically-supported treatments.
This post is a pitch. Or it might be a pitch in a post. Either way, I am honored to share with you a hot-off-the-presses new book, titled Relationship Factors in Counseling, by Dr. Kimberly Parrow. Here’s the publisher’s link: https://titles.cognella.com/relationship-factors-in-counseling-9781793578754. The book is also available on Amazon and other booksellers.
Below, I’m pasting the Foreword to this book. Not only am I jazzed about the book, I’m also jazzed about the Foreword. You should read it. It’s really good. You’ll learn about Kimberly Parrow, as well as a bit of trivia about relationship factors that you should definitely know. I haven’t mentioned who wrote the Foreword, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.
I first met Kimberly Parrow, before she was Dr. Kimberly Parrow, in a letter of recommendation from a psychology professor at the University of Montana. Having read well over 1,000 letters of recommendation over the years, this one imprinted in my brain. The professor wrote something like, “Kimberly Parrow is the real deal. You should admit her to master’s program in clinical mental health counseling. You will never regret it.”
We did (admit her into our master’s program . . . and our doctoral program). And we didn’t (ever regret it).
Kim Parrow was, is, and continues to be one of the most enthusiastic learners I’ve encountered. She walked onto our campus at 44-years-old, as a first-generation college student, having waited with bated breath for the money and opportunity to pursue her college degree. Nine years later she strolled off campus with her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. If we were Notre Dame, we’d call her a triple domer (n.b., that’s what you call people with three degrees from Notre Dame). At the University of Montana, we just call her amazing.
In one of her first doctoral classes, I introduced Kim to the concept of evidence-based relationship factors (EBRFs). She was hooked; hooked in the way that only graduate students get hooked. She was hooked by an idea. So hooked that she immediately wanted more; she wanted to write a journal article on EBRFs (so we did). She wanted to do her dissertation on EBRFs (so she did). She wanted to do extra additional trainings for practicum and internship students on EBRFs (and so she did). Kim’s attraction to EBRFs stemmed from her belief that relationships constitute the core of what’s therapeutic. As we explored EBRFs together, noting all the research supporting the idea that relationships drive counseling and psychotherapy, I came to see that Kim’s judgment was, and continues to be, practically perfect.
I’ve been reading dissertations for 30+ years. I’m embarrassed to say that I find reading most dissertations—even those written by students whom I love—drudgery. But Kim’s dissertation was electric. Page by page, she kept surprising me with new content and new learning; it was more than I expected. Kim had taken the basic knowledge and skills linked to EBRFs, contextualized them within the scientific literature, and then wrote about them in ways that inspired me to keep reading and keep learning. As she wrote more, her writing got better and better, and the content more illuminating.
About a month ago, I was unable to make it to my initial lecture for an advanced counseling theories course. I asked Kim to fill in. She quickly said yes. I offered to pay her. She quickly said no. To stick with the money theme, if I now had a dollar for every time one of my students has, since Kim’s lecture, mentioned Kim Parrow, eyes agog, and referenced the central role of relationship factors in counseling and psychotherapy, I would have many dollars. What I’m trying to say is that Kim is a natural and talented clinician-teacher. That’s a rare version of the real deal her former developmental psychology professor was trying to tell us about.
And now, a few words about this book. Kim has done what most scholars and professionals are unable to do. She has taken theoretical principles, empirical research findings, blended them with her common-sense-salt-of-the-earth style, and created a practical guide for helping counselors and psychotherapists be better. The book is aimed to slide into the educational development of practicum and/or internship students who have learned microskills and are facing their first clients. This particular point in student development is crucial; it’s a time when students sometimes lose their way as they try to make the improbable leap from microskills to counseling and psychotherapy techniques. In making that leap, they often fall prey to the urge to quickly “prove up” and “do something” with clients. In this process, they often abandon their microskills and forget about the therapeutic relationship. Kim’s overall point is this: Don’t forget about the therapeutic relationship because relationship factors are every bit as evidence-based as theory-based or research-based technical strategies. The renowned writer-researcher John C. Norcross put it this way:
Anyone who dispassionately looks at effect sizes can now say that the therapeutic relationship is as powerful, if not more powerful, than the particular treatment method a therapist is using.
The fact that therapeutic relationships are empirically supported makes Kim’s content relevant not only to students early in their clinical development, but also to all of us. Having taught this content with Kim, and to groups of professional counselors, psychologists, and social workers across the United States, I can say without hesitation that the content in this book can and will make all of us better therapists.
Kim covers 10 specific, evidence-based interactive relationship skills. What unique—and possibly the best thing about Kim’s coverage of relationship skills—is that she provides specific, actionable guidance for how to enact these 10 skills. As a preview, the 10 skills include:
Cultural humility
Congruence
Unconditional Positive Regard
Empathic Understanding
The Emotional Bond
Mutual Goal-Setting
Collaborative Therapeutic Tasks
Rupture and Repair
Countertransference Management
Progress Monitoring
In the pages that follow, you will get a taste of Kim Parrow’s relational orientation and a glimpse of the evidence supporting these 10 relationship factors as therapeutic forces that innervate counseling process. You will also experience the magic of a talented clinician-teacher. The magic—or, if you prefer, secret sauce—is Kim’s ability to make these distant intellectual relationship concepts real, practical, and actionable. To help make relationship concepts real, she has engaged several contributers (and herself) to write pedagogical break-out boxes titled, “Developing Your Skills.” Engaging with these skill development activities will, as the neuroscience fans like to say, “Change your brain” and help you develop neural pathways to enhance your relational connections.
As I write about skills and skill development, I’m aware that Carl (and Natalie) Rogers would view the reduction of his core conditions to “skills” as blasphemy. This awareness makes me want to emphasize that Kim “gets” Rogerian core conditions and does not reduce them into simple skills. Instead, she embraces the attitudinal and intentional dimensions of Rogerian core conditions, while simultaneously offering behaviors and words that counselors and psychotherapists can try on in hopes of expressing congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathy.
I’ve had a few conversations with Derald Wing Sue over the years and he has always emphasized that culture in counseling and psychotherapy shouldn’t be relegated to a separate chapter at the end of the book—as if culture is ever a separate or standalone issue. Reading how Kim handles culture reminded me of Derald Wing Sue’s message. Instead of relegating it to the end, Kim begins with the relationship factor of cultural humility. That makes for a beautiful start. Cultural humility involves, above all else, the adoption of a non-superiority interpersonal stance. . . which is a simple and excellent anti-racist message. But Kim doesn’t stop talking about culture after Chapter 1. She does what Derald Wing Sue recommends: She integrates cultural awareness, knowledge, and skill development into the whole book. This stance—non-superiority and anti-racist—is consistent with Kim’s interpersonal style and is also the right place to start as counselors set about the journey to collaborate and co-create positive outcomes.
One of Kim’s writing goals is to offer ideas and activities that are likely to increase counselor cognitive complexity. You can see that in the two preceding paragraphs. Instead of reducing Rogerian core conditions into skills, she honors how they can become both attitudes and skills. And instead of putting culture into a silo, she spreads seeds of culture through all her chapters.
This book is a remarkable accomplishment. The language, the examples, the science, the skill development activities, and the tone, welcome readers to engage with this book, and bring the material to life. I believe if you read this book and engage in the activities, your counselor self-efficacy will grow.
For anyone who has gotten this far in reading this foreword, I have some reading tips to share. First, read this book with your heart wide open. I say this because this book is about the heart of the counselor or psychotherapist. Second, as you read, keep yourself in relationship with Kim. The book is about relational factors and the details Kim shares will not only help you in your relationships with clients, but, as she often reminded me and other people whom she cornered so she could talk to us about relational factors, these relationship factors are relevant and applicable to all relationships.
Obviously, I respect Dr. Kimberly Parrow and believe she has produced an excellent book. Obviously, I think you should read this book and do as so many of us have already done, learn about evidence-based relationship factors from someone who is a remarkably talented clinician-teacher. To paraphrase what that developmental psychology professor wrote about Kim many years ago, you should accept Kim Parrow into your personal program of learning immediately, and begin learning from her as soon as you can. You will not regret it.
All my best to you in your counseling and psychotherapy work.
I’m into narratives these days, having fallen into the abyss of believing in the social construction of reality. But before you dismiss me as a woo-woo post-modernist, let me say that when I refer to reality, I’m not talking about the molecular composition of the walls in my house. I’m not a magical social constructionist. My walls—and ceilings—are solid realities, regardless of what Richard Bach, my friends, and the media might tell me. When I refer to reality being socially constructed, I’m talking about social reality, mental health labels, the Tooth Fairy, neuro-chemical imbalances, political spin doctoring, and other things people believe in, in the absence of scientific evidence.
My narrative this morning included turning off NPR after less than 60 seconds. Turning off NPR came on the heels of my previous night’s lament of Al Jazeera’s unusually positive coverage of the latest legal indictment of a certain treasonous, lecherous, insurrectionist to whom I will refer to as the former guy (aka TFG), because I’m now refusing to make any further verbal donations to his narrative.
As I lumbered around the kitchen this morning, Rita sarcastically said something like, “You might as well turn on the news to see if NPR is saying anything nice about TFG.” Sadly, within seconds, that’s exactly what we heard. TFG’s voice told us things about, “the indictment” being “totally ridiculous,” and “They’re after you, not me. I’m just standing in the way.”
We never heard a peep about the details of the jeopardy to our national security that TFG has posed and is posing. Neither was there a jot nor a tittle about the nuclear secrets TFG scattered around his various bathrooms, closets, and dining rooms, allegedly making them available to onlookers. We didn’t hear a balanced or fair or representative articulation of the known facts. Nope, we were only provided with socially constructed and obvious lies that as anyone who studies history knows will grow less obvious and more favorable to TFG, the more the local, national, and international news repeat them. . . and repeat them they will.
Seriously, what’s wrong with the media? Why is the media quoting and privileging TFG’s narrative, when his penchant for lying about virtually everything is a known and witnessed fact that requires very little social construction?
Over the years, we’ve given many thousands of dollars to public radio. Today I regret every penny . . . again. The last time I regretted every penny and temporarily stopped giving was back in 2016, when NPR continually let TFG’s voice be front and center over and over on their news broadcasts. All too often I heard his voice on NPR twisting and fabricating reality by saying things like “Crooked Hillary” and “lock her up.” When NPR assigned a nasty conservative woman to cover Hillary’s presidential campaign, big surprise, day after day, she brought up Hillary’s emails, referred to them as a “scandal” and made Hillary sound terrible.
Who writes the news? Who makes decisions to polish up TFG on national news reports, simultaneously flushing the intellectual capacity of the American electorate down the toilet? Who makes the final determination that today and tomorrow and the next day we’ll keep hearing TFG’s voice proclaiming his innocence or using the words witch hunt or insulting his rivals?
We should be ready for a pattern of increasing denial, increasing blame of others, increasing lies, declarations of complete and total innocence, and repeated claims of mistreatment. He will protect and insulate himself from critique and responsibility through active counterattacks, along with alignment, even briefly, with whatever sources of power, control, and dominance he can find. This might mean further alignment with Vladimir Putin, more campaign rallies, and an additional need to gather others around him who will offer only adulation. He will gleefully throw anyone and everyone who betrays him under the bus. As he escalates, his insults toward others will become increasingly demeaning—virtually everyone questioning his superiority will be labeled a dog or disgrace or traitor.
That was from 2018. All this has been predictable, and continues to be predictable.
When I complain privately to NPR, they tell me they work hard to balance the news. Really? Are they balanced because they say so? They can’t be unaware of their misrepresentation of reality through consistent bashing of Biden and over-representation of the voice of TFG. NPR cannot be that obtuse. We need to push them and other news outlets to get it right this time.
We need to hear the news in context. We shouldn’t hear TFG’s voice without also hearing something about the history of his lies, his destruction, his assaulting of women, his defaming whomever he pleases to defame, and the rest of the whole package.
If you want representational, contextual, and historically-informed political news, you should subscribe the Heather Cox Richardson (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/). Or you should check out the fantastic writings of Timothy Snyder, Levin Professor of History at Yale and author of “On Tyranny” (https://timothysnyder.org/). Recently, Snyder wrote:
The job of the executive is to enforce the law. Putting the executive above the law makes nonsense of the Constitution. Does trying a former president make us a banana republic? No, not doing so makes us a banana republic, or really something worse. The moment we say that one person is above the law, we no longer have the rule of law. The moment we no longer have the rule of law, we cease to exist as any kind of republic. . . . In our country, citizens play interesting roles in the judicial branch. For example, they serve on grand juries, such as the one that issued the indictment of Trump on espionage and other charges. This is a process, one to be respected, especially by elected representatives. None of this is political advice. These are just the words of a citizen who cares about the country. The political advice, however, would be this: if you commit yourself now to an anti-constitutional position, you will have a hard time extracting yourself later.
Snyder’s words made me think of the news outlets as TFG’s minions. A minion is a follower or underling of a powerful person, especially an unimportant or servile one. Thinking about minions led me to reconstruct Snyder’s words as a message for TFG’s media minions:
If you commit yourself now to an anti-constitutional narrative from TFG, you will have a hard time extracting yourself later.
Write to your news media. Tell them you want representative, contextual, and factual news. Tell them you don’t want to hear TFG’s voice without also hearing the context and history of his dangerous, self-serving, and anti-patriotic lies. This time around, we don’t want an election narrative controlled by TFG and his minions. . . principally because, we do not want to grow up to be minions, which is precisely the future our news media is marching us toward.
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John Sommers-Flanagan 