I was hoping by now I could post about my new clients. Problem is, I don’t have any.
First, I got my liability insurance. I’m covered as a part time contractor and the insurance is pretty cheap. My NASW membership was more than twice the insurance cost.

I waited for a while to see if I could get self pay clients but the agency I volunteer at didn’t have any for me. I found out during the school year, interns take a lot of their self pay and sliding scale clients.

So I asked if I could apply to work with insured clients. I filled out all of the paperwork (it’s really long), got an NPI number, turned in copies of my license and learned how to do all of their insurance paperwork and I have been waiting for over a month. I know from a previous job that insurance companies take a long time to approve new clinicians. I know from volunteering that the agency takes a long time to get things done. So right now I am actually losing money by volunteering since I am paying for insurance and a NASW membership.

There is always the possibility of going to another agency to be a contractor or fee for service provider but I like the agency I volunteer at. I can come in on the days I choose and see only adults. The other agencies I have come across want a Saturday and a clinician that will see children and families.

At my job, I’ve started supervising interns and coordinating the internship program instead of just assisting. I like working with interns. It amazes me when I say something and they write it down. I have a good relationship with my students and they seem to accept that I am learning as I go. They tell me “for the next round of interns” when they find mistakes in our supervision or orientation process.
I try to be very hands on to learn how to make everything better for the students. This is a huge time suck. I’ve spent hours meeting with a student that I was not supervising. I am at the point that my job could be split off into two positions, one dealing only with interns and universities. Too bad that I am in non-profit land and that will never happen. So I will have to do a better job of preparing other supervisors “for the next round.”

I received my license in the mail so I’m all official now!

When studying for the exam, I noticed a lack of centralized study guides, reviews of un-official study materials and answers to general exam questions. I added to the mess with my last post but it would be really nice if state NASW sites would create a better exam prep page/site. Right now on the NASW-IL site, there is a general page about exam requirements and NASW sponsored test prep sessions. Same info that has been up since I started grad school.

Now that I am licensed, I’m looking liability(malpractice) insurance so I can go from being a volunteer therapist to a part time contractual therapist at the agency I’ve been finishing my clinical hours at. No surprise, I’m encountering the same lack of information. Luckily, my clinical supervisor has a private practice and I can ask him my questions.
From what I’ve read so far, I have to be a member of the NASW to get liability insurance. NASW membership – $190. Insurance – varies depending on FT/PT and how many years you’ve been in practice. Don’t think you get a discount for experience, the price goes up each year.
So now I have to calculate how much I can make with a couple contractual clients vs how much it will cost to get insurance. I’m already seeing clients that don’t pay a fee. I tried to get all of my clients to see me on Saturdays when I started and slowly all of my clients migrated to a weeknight. People’s schedules change so I have to be somewhat flexible but I don’t want to end up making multiple trips to see one client at a time.

So as I find out more about insurance and being a contractual therapist, I will post more. I can try to make this blog at least a little useful :)

I’m studying for the LCSW exam, hoping to take it by the end of the month. I’ve been hunting for new study aids to see if anything awesome and wonderful has come out since I took the LSW exam 2 years ago. I haven’t found the magic book of passing the exam but I have found a couple new resources.
The Social Work Podcast has been useful so far. Go back to the earlier podcasts, they cover more basic topics. They are concise, interesting and I like the podcaster’s voice.
Social Work Chat Forums A fairly active message board (even though no one has answered my licensure question yet!)about social work topics including licensure.
LCSW Exam Blog I’ve just started reading it. The author covers DSM diagnoses, theories and test taking tips.
I’m searching for a book my clinical supervisor recommended. He said it’s a clinical social work text that gives brief overviews of client topics and the author is Brandler. He mentioned it because he was going to see a new couple and hadn’t seen a couple in a while so he read the chapter on working with couples as a refresher. There is a Brandler that writes social work books, but she writes about group social work. I found a book by Brandell but it doesn’t seem action/treatment focused the way my supervisor was describing.
My brother is an undergrad at a local uni so I’ve been asking him to grab random texts for me.

And if anyone in internetland reads this blog, the basic question that is unanswered on the forum is: Is my clinical supervisor contacted to verify paperwork that I turn in to the Dept of Professional Regulations? It would be supersweet if the actual Dept could answer my question but they don’t answer their phone or emails.

No food pics this time! I did make creme brulee for the first time last week. It turned out tasty and the kitchen torch is fun to use. Also don’t shop at Jewel or Dominick’s for vanilla beans! 1 vanilla bean was $12 at Dominick’s and I went to Cost Plus World market and 2 beans were $3 there.

I came to the conclusion that I just really like tasty food. I like cooking, going to new restaurants, trying new flavors. Maybe if I worked in the food industry, I wouldn’t like food as much. Just like how I don’t have any interest in being a therapist now that I have clients. It’s not really as dramatic as it sounds. I’m just having a hard time with a client and wake up on the days I play therapist, hoping my clients have canceled. I don’t want them to stay sick, I just want them to get well with someone else.

I have a client that is draining me and she has a type of mental illness that doesn’t usually have a great recovery. So she is going to stay like this for a long time, maybe forever. If I had my own private practice, she would be mine to deal with for years. I may have mentioned it before, I was talking to my supervisor about keeping my clients after my supervision hours were finished. I said I would be OK seeing my clients for a few months but it’s not like I wanted to keep them on for a year. He looked surprised and asked why not. As a private practice therapist, he wanted a client that would come regularly for a year. I’ve worked in so many short term treatment settings that I forget that this is what some social workers do. They see the same people long term. They get to know clients so well that when they bring up a random friend’s name, you don’t have to stop and ask what their relationship with that person is like.

I told my supervisor that this client was difficult and he acknowledged that she is and that there is nothing I can do about it. She is difficult in a way that I have to keep pulling her back in. I have to reassure and engage her in therapy. I have to make extra effort to be supportive. If I wouldn’t do these things, she would probably stop showing up. And there is where I’m torn! She is still coming back so obviously I’m doing my job but I’m also starting to dislike my job. All of this makes me question why I’m getting my clinical license to begin with. I know part of this is just anxiety over being a new therapist.

I early voted this week! The line was huge, the whole process took at least an hour and a half. A few people saw the line and left but many more just pouted and got in line. People in line were excited! An old lady behind me was talking to the person next to her about how we are making history.

I came back and had an email about the Obama election night party. I didn’t click on it right away and I should have. By the time I got to it, tickets were gone and the waitlist was up. Already tickets are up on Craigslist, some people are asking $100-200/ticket.

I got a bicycle! Its a purple 15 speed hybrid. It’s a 16″ which I at first thought would be too small but it ended up feeling a lot better than the other bikes I’ve tried. The tires are bigger too which probably helps. When I get more stable on this one I can always trade in. The used bike shop I went to had some supercool old Schwinns that they had restored. I would like to rock the vintage banana seat. I stopped by Target afterward to look for a U Lock and they just had the stupid cable locks that are easy to break. So I went to Home Depot and got some really thick metal chain. I had a padlock at home so tada, $7 bike lock.

I kind of (emotionally) pushed my client today in session. She is having relationship problems and doesn’t want to talk to her partner because she is afraid of making her partner upset and angry. So I tried to get her to brainstorm things to say, find emotion words, use I statements, all that good fighting stuff. She was struggling with it and finally just said she wanted to talk about another subject. So I gave her homework, next session she has to bring in her I statements and emotion words. She seemed to like this idea a lot better and maybe writing the list will push her to have the talk with her partner before next session. But if that happens, I need to think of something else for us to talk about. Dammit!

I just got a bag and I am devouring it. It’s bad enough the intern brought a candy dish to work but now I have to bring some home, too?
I am going to be jiggling in all of the wrong places when burlesque class starts.
Speaking of jiggling, I posted my picture in the yearbook of a forum I like. Then I forgot about the page for about a month. I recently check it and I have a bunch of comments from random other users. Most of the comments are calling me fat. I know I shouldn’t care because it’s not like people from this forum know me in real life or matter and their kind of known for being mean. But I think I look good in the picture! I am sticking my hip out at an odd angle but that’s just me trying to make excuses. So I let the internet upset me.

All of my clients bailed on me this week. One called a few days ahead of time with a valid excuse to reschedule, one no called/no showed and I still haven’t heard from her, one canceled right before her appointment but then later rescheduled. One of my rescheduled clients said I’m too young! I pouted about it in supervision today. He was reassuring that I’m not horrible and helped me figure out what to do with my obviously resistant clients. He kept asking questions that I had no answer to but then when he told me what he thought the answer was, it was something so basic. I forgot how easy this counseling thing is.

Busy couple of weeks! Birthdays, bachelorette party, bikes (can’t think of anymore B’s) and clients!
I want to get a bicycle so I can ride in the Halloween Critical Mass. My roommate has convinced me that it’s much fun and I won’t die because it’s a slow ride and there are lots of people. I didn’t feel so reassured by the guy I met today to look at a bike he was selling. I got on and said it was too tall. He asked if I was one of those people that hasn’t been on a bike in 5 years. How did he tell so quickly? Probably the way I gracefully swung my leg over the bike like I was mounting a horse. And 5 years? Try more like 10 aside from pretending to ride away on my niece/nephew’s bike while babysitting. I didn’t get the bike because I couldn’t put my feet flat on the ground. Maybe not everyone needs that in a bike? He was nice about meeting me in the rain to have me reject his bike because I’m short.

And clients! I met with 2 of my clients last weekend. I’m kind of bothered at the disorganization of the agency. They didn’t get me a key to the counseling rooms and I was waiting in the lobby for someone to bring one down. I heard my client arrive and asked the receptionist for a key again and he said “Oh, the person with the keys just walked away.” I reminded him I’m NEW and don’t know the person he is talking about. An introduction would have been helpful. So his next solution was to bang on the door of the counseling area. Great. I did and eventually another staff person lent me her key for the day. So far this key thing has not been resolved because (I was finally informed) volunteers don’t get keys.

My clients are awesome and I know I’m capable of handling their issues but I also know it’s going to take a couple sessions for “counselor mode” to kick in. I can snap to “crisis counselor” right away but regular counseling takes a different level of planning and is about much less tangible things. I met with my supervisor and told him my concerns and he seems pretty convinced that I’m on the right track. I’m doing a good job of identifying core issues, I know what Not to do, I’m eager to offer the client something. What that something is…I don’t know. Maybe I’m looking for too concrete of a solution. I’m used to cognitive-behavioral counseling, crisis intervention and substance abuse group treatment. All very structured. Substance abuse treatment even has steps!

So I’m working on not letting my anxiety freeze me. Work isn’t busy this week, I can read up on the very important 2nd session.

Not going to go into detail about the bachelorette party but dammit if I knew the bachelorette’s mom was going to be there, I would have got her something a bit more tame! I was a bit put off by a party goer going “eww” at my gift. Another said her husband didn’t want her having “things like that.” WTF ladies? Take control of your vajays!
Also a nice drunk boy tried picking me up at the bar after the party. He told me he broke his rib the week before and I responded by hitting him. I’m excellent with men. (He still invited me back to his place and then I snuck out when he wasn’t looking.)

I listened to the MSF webinar today. It’s a useful beginner’s recruitment seminar, I recommend it to anyone interested in working with MSF. I learned that mental health professionals working with MSF have more of a supervisory than a hands on role. That’s kind of disappointing, I wanted to do more hands on work but I do understand the benefit of having local people do the one on one work (if they do employ local people.)
If I wanted to work with them, I’m on the right track, getting my clinical license and having experience with DV and sexual assault victims. I need more clinical experience and experience working in under-developed areas. As ghetto as the West side of Chicago is, I don’t think it counts toward the type of experience they’re looking for. So I would probably have to do some domestic work first.
They also want bilingual workers, French preferred. I took French in undergrad and don’t remember any of it. Relearning French might have a dual purpose, I can use it to score points on Canadian immigration tests if Obama doesn’t win.
It seems like a lot of work but it’s not like I would be applying anytime soon. I need 2 years clinical experience post LCSW. By checking it out now, I can slowly work toward these things and when I am clinically qualified I won’t have to rush to find experiences or skills to be a good candidate. If only I was so prepared about everything in my life!

I met with the client services coordinator at the GLBT health center on Friday. I got files for 3 clients, saw the counseling rooms and called 2 of my clients to schedule for next week. Yay!

My boss at work must sense my boredom. I was supposed to do lots of data analysis for a research project I’m barely involved in. She had a meeting about the project and it was decided that the people directly involved in the project would pull the data, give it to me, I would de-identify it and put it into a pretty spreadsheet and send it to the university we work with and someone there would do the analysis. Yay minimal involvement but still getting my name on the study as support staff!

I went to a grad school fair and talked to some reps for naturopathy programs. Next week I’m watching a recruitment webinar for Doctors Without Borders. Obviously I have no idea which direction I’m going in.

One thing I’m a huge nerd about is Halloween. My coworkers have already started asking when I am going to decorate my office. I hate early decorating (go away Xmas decs!) so I usually wait until October has arrived to decorate for Halloween. This year I am decorating a day early because I am working with an intern that is possibly as geeky as I am about Halloween and she is only in on Tuesdays. So I went shopping for decorations today and I’m going to pull out old decs tonight. I keep my work decs non-ghouly and leave the skulls and monsters for home.

I’ve been thinking about the fall things I like (birthday, Apple Fest, Halloween) and trying not to think about the scary darkness of winter. Winter has things I like too (Germanfest, glugg, oddly colored gingerbread houses, drinking myself to death on New Years Eve) but always has some extra sadness that isn’t there with other times of the year.

I think I found a boxing gym that I can afford. It’s a lot cheaper than the other boxing gyms, maybe because it sucks or maybe because it’s small and newer.

I didn’t see clients this weekend, I’m going in this week to get an overview of the whole client intake/scheduling process. So I will call my clients and see if they want to meet with me this weekend or next. I’m happy to be seeing clients because work has been terribly boring lately but so nervous!