Tag Archives: blogging

Suicide Assessment and Intervention

You Are One In A Million

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While I blog away, WordPress counts things. I don’t exactly understand how it works, but apparently my little blog just passed the 1.0 million visitor and 1.5 million views thresholds. Wow.

You may be wondering, what does passing that million-visitor pinnacle mean, and why is JSF sharing about his blogging achievements?

The answer to that important question is: All this means it’s time to celebrate!

In honor of this blogging achievement, I’m doing what bloggers are supposed to do. I’m honoring my million visitors by giving out five free books.

To “win” a book, all you have to do is post here, a nice, supportive, celebratory comment of at least 20 words about this blog. If you’re one of the first five to post a comment in response to this historic blog celebration, you should also email me your best mailing address. Then, if you’re quick at the blog commenting draw, in the next couple weeks, you will receive one shiny new copy of the exciting thriller titled, “Suicide Assessment and Treatment Planning: A Strengths-Based Approach” by John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan.

Thanks for following and reading my blog. Today’s news means, quite literally, that “You are one in a million!”

I very much appreciate your support. I hope you’ve enjoyed, or appreciated, or at least not hated my idiosyncratic and sometimes irreverent posts.

Best,

John S-F   

Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, Personal Reflections

Two Announcements: A New Article on EBRFs and a New Milestone

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Coffee

Two things.

First, Kim Parrow, a doctoral student at the University of Montana emailed me a copy of our hot new journal article. The article explores evidence-based relationship factors as an exciting focus of research, practice, and training in Counselor Education. The article is published in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling. Here’s a link so you can read the article, if you like: EBRFs in JMHC 2019

Second, today when I logged into my WordPress blog, something seemed different. As it turns out, my official number of followers had turned from 999 to 1,000. I’m not sure what that means, other than a woman named Shaina from Thrive has won a special prize. Maybe I’ll see you on Thursday evening Shaina.

I hope you’ve all had a great day, especially all the veterans out there, who IMHO deserve deep appreciation for their service.

Multicultural, Personal Reflections

It’s Not Unusual: John’s Weekend Reflections

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john-rapA stranger posted a comment on my blog today. As Tom Jones might say, “It’s not unusual” for my blog to stimulate reader commentary. After all, I’m expressing my opinion, distributing professional information, and often I specifically ask for reader feedback.

Mostly I get positive feedback. Occasionally, I touch a nerve with someone and get pushback or criticism. What’s most interesting to me is that the nerves I touch are nearly always nerves related to White privilege or feminism. I suppose that’s not unusual either.

Today’s comment started with, “Wow. All u do is wafle here. . .” and went on to provide a rambling critique of White privilege (I think). Three thoughts on this: First, to find my several year-old White privilege blog post requires significant effort and searching. Second, with the advent of spellcheck, typically it’s very hard for your computer to let you misspell “waffle” as “wafle.” Third, the critique, as is not unusual, didn’t seem to have much to do with the content of my blog post. Instead, the commenter was clearly focusing in on his own personal issues and history and not so much on what I had written.

The next part of all is also not unusual. In response, I felt disappointment, hurt, and defensiveness. To be perfectly honest, I wanted to counterpoint or counterpunch my commenter. I managed to stop myself. Instead, I labeled his comment as spam and moved on.

Upon reflection, my “spamming” his comment was probably passive-aggressive. And, it was (and is) clear that I haven’t moved on. Funny how criticism has a way of hanging on long after the party has ended and everyone should go home.

In conclusion, here’s the sort of thing I wish I’d written . . .

“Hello beloved fellow human. I’m grateful that you took the time to read my blog and make a comment. Thank you for that. Based on your comment, I think you and I probably disagree on this topic. Rather than arguing and trying to convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong (which likely wouldn’t work anyway), I want to say that I respect your right to a perspective and opinion that’s different from mine. I’m sure we’ve lived very different lives and so it’s not unusual that we would disagree on White privilege. Although I feel defensive about what I wrote, I can also feel a part of myself that’s way down deep and not defensive. That part of me wants to reach out and say ‘Hey. No big deal that we disagree. It wasn’t my intent to write something that offended you. I wish you health and happiness. I wish us a better and deeper mutual understanding. Wherever you feel hurt or pain, I wish you healing. I hear your disagreement with me and, in the future, although I know I won’t be perfect, I will try to be more sensitive and compassionate in what I write.’

If you like, you can read the offending blog post here: https://johnsommersflanagan.com/2012/09/14/a-white-male-psychologist-reflects-on-white-privilege/

Have a fantastic Saturday night.

John SF

Personal Reflections, Politics

The Birth of My New Secret Magic Unprofessional Blog

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John Rap

People sometimes say, “Rules are made to be broken.”

I always say, “That’s just ridiculous. Rules were made to be followed.”

But every yang has a yin and it’s come time for me to let a little of my rule-breaking yin out.

As you know, I have this (Dr. John Sommers-Flanagan) professional blog. It’s serious, with a side of irreverence. But despite my irrepressible irreverence, being narrowly professional left me feeling like an academic in a tweed jacket. As an example, I felt compelled to avoid politics and profanity. I began realizing that this professional blog was too much yang.

So I invented a yin-flavored unprofessional blog. In my unprofessional blog I speak more freely about politics and personal experiences. It’s also a secret blog, and I use a mysterious yin alias, so that helps.

In this professional blog (the one you’re reading now), I avoid particular words, especially words like “secret” or “magic.” I avoid these words because magic is fake, and my professional self thinks that whenever writers use “secret,” it means they’re marketing something. It’s like unveiling the “secret rules to happiness.” The rules aren’t really secret and they won’t bring you happiness, but the words work to sell books and get likes on Facebook and Twitter. I also avoid words that don’t fit with my scientific, academic persona. That means I don’t use words like countless or tireless, because they’re just stupid words; nothing is countless and no one is tireless.

The inaugural post of my new Secret Magic Unprofessional Blog is about gun safety. It’s unprofessional, so don’t click on this link unless you want to read my thoughts on the social and political issue of gun violence and gun safety. Here’s the link:https://mysecretmagic.com/

Okay, I know, gun safety isn’t even controversial and my Pathetic Open Letter to the NRA is political like oatmeal is political. That’s because gun safety is all about professional issues related to suicide, mental health, and child safety. Okay, so I use the F-word and called a certain politician a dip-shit, but that’s just me tossing in some unprofessional language to make a point about what’s right and good and I know you know that making a point about what’s right and good isn’t really much political.

If you enjoy my Secret Magic Unprofessional Blog, please LIKE it and FOLLOW it and share it NOW and OFTEN: https://mysecretmagic.com/. As is the case with most bloggers, my purpose isn’t to become rich and famous. Instead, I’m all about exercising my freedom of expression, while irrationally hoping that someone on the planet might hear my voice and experience learning or pleasure or meaning or inspiration or solidarity. Now that would be magic.

https://mysecretmagic.com/

Personal Reflections

Vulnerability and Magnificence from Rita

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Hi All.

This comes from Rita. It’s her musing on life and death and spirituality. She tells me to warn you that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. This is true. But then again, who gets to avoid a cup of tea of life and death and spirituality.

You be the judge . . . if you want.

And if you like this, go to her blog and like it and become an email or WordPress follower.

Have a fabulous weekend.

John

Before the snow came, I burned rotten, misshapen wood. Dirty wood, not even worth cutting up for the woodstove. Wood filled with unremovable, wayward screws. Such fires are my last resort. Enduring the scorn of my carpenters, I save every scrap of wood—wood that was once a seed that grew into a tree that was […]

via Fire — Short visits with an honest God

Personal Reflections

This is Why I Have a Blog (in 212 words)

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While visiting my parents recently an older gentleman on a scooter rode up and greeted me. We had a friendly conversation within the confines of my parents’ gated community. He said his dog had mistaken me for his son. I looked down and saw a small dog or large rodent sniffing my shoes. Then his son emerged from the house. The son was quite animated as he was taking a smoke break from his online gaming.

The next morning I saw the son again. He was pedaling his bicycle slowly, smoking, and looking rather like a homeless man. He didn’t seem to recognize me.

I found myself thinking I felt reassured that the older gentleman’s very small dog obviously had a very small brain.

But who am I to say whom or what I do or do not resemble. Maybe I’m more like a gaming and smoking homeless man on the street than I think. After all, I can’t see myself very well anyway.

This is the nature of my internal conversations. A swing towards the too critical and too judgmental followed by a swing back toward self-critique.

This might be why B.F. Skinner suggested that thinking is irrelevant.

This also might be why I have a blog and not a dog.