[This happened a year ago, when I (re)started my journey into "mental health"]
I cannot help the feeling of elation when I type http://www.counseling.org in my browser to navigate the pages of the American Counseling Association website. I am certain this tiny step is the first of many to advance my professional identity. Joining professional organizations is personally paramount to find, ascribe, and unveil meaning when exploring new worldviews within the mainstream culture. It is worth noticing this whole experience will take place without me leaving my living room. Nevertheless, I am transported.
It is beneficial I have a concrete task to achieve, otherwise I would be lost forever in the immense amount of offerings that lure my attention on the home page. I would like to go to each link, and see what is inside. Creating my account is a succession of simple steps and check marks. I do not like to select “not applicable” for counseling specialties and current work settings, but I know it is a temporary, artificial statement. The future possibilities are enticing: crisis, multicultural counseling, couples and family, grief, trauma, assessment, education, supervision, groups and more.
I decide to join the divisions of the Association for Creativity in Counseling (ACC), The Association for Humanistic Counseling (AHC), the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (AMCD), and the International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors (IAMFC). When I am confronted with the final bill, I decide to wait longer to further my identity…
My natural passion takes me first to the link with details about webinars. Since I am a mind in search of a theory that resonates with my current path, I find the upcoming event very encouraging. The webinar promises to show how to develop our own integrative theory, help to blend multiple theories, and even guide us to the ultimate mental health practitioner goal: to be theoretically aseptic. It seems too ambitious for an hour webinar, but I am seeing this through the lenses of a beginner in this Northern hemisphere. I consider this another hint I have a lot to catch up. It is hard for me to fathom a world were a practitioner of any specialty within the mental health field could be aseptic in regards of the theories they use to understand the communities and people they serve. Regardless, the idea of having webinars at the tip of my keyboard is professionally comforting, not to mention the free podcasts that I hope to download soon. Technology applied to the field I am moving into is reassuring.
The green banner offers publications, access to journals and blogs, links to support and plenty of opportunities for participation. The site encourages me to get involved, motivates the curiosity to get to know others across the country with common goals. The pressroom shows a lively community, which seems to engage words with actions of change.
I browse through the pages of past issues of the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development; the articles are relevant and interesting. Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, is the central topic of an article about prevention of adolescent aggressive behavior. Finding topics I am familiar with, observing the possibilities that match my interests, and sensing the overall positive forward path of the profession are, in short, the main factors that will keep me coming for more, online and in the physical world.
