When you go off to therapist school, one of the things you're taught is how to keep boundaries with your clients. If you think about it, therapy can be one of the most intimate relationships between 2 people. Yet it's also a professional relationship that will inevitably come to an end (and that's a good thing!). Ask any therapist how much they tell clients about themselves or their personal lives and you'll get a myriad of responses. Some are very open, which in my opinion isn't a very wise choice, and some are very very closed, which I also don't necessarily agree with. I lie somewhere in the middle, and it varies by each person I work with. A therapist sharing information about themselves with a client requires a lot of thought because the ultimate question is "If I tell my client this about myself, will it help them?" More importantly, though, "If I tell my client this, will it do them any harm?"
With that, I thought I'd share a few things about myself that are pretty benign by any standards for NHBPM #27's topic - Bet You Didn't Know....
I mentioned in my previous post that I spend part of my time working as an IT consultant. Before I went to graduate school in 2004, I worked as a computer programmer (.NET) for a rather large commercial real estate firm. I spent quite a bit of time in the corporate world before switching careers, including a few years at American Express. Other post-college jobs included working in a bakery, a cigar shop, and for an infertility group medical practice.
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| I own this shirt. |
When I worked for said cigar shop - it was the 90's when cigars were a big thing - I was in a somewhat controversial ad in Chicago Magazine that included the local alderman and his wife in a Vegas-style scene where I was the card dealer. Apparently a politician in a gambling pose smoking a stogie is frowned upon and drew editorial ire in a couple of the Chicago newspapers. Unfortunately I lost the magazine in my last move, otherwise I'd scan it to share.
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| Pretty sure that job took 4 years off my life. |
I also mentioned in my previous post that I have OCD tendencies for symmetry. Which, in case you were curious, is one of the more common presentations of OCD. Thankfully these "compulsions" don't get out of hand or cause any impairment in my life. But, I do like to line up food in the shopping cart rather than just tossing it in there. My husband takes great joy in shaking the cart to knock over my neatly lined up cans of beets.
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| Yes. |
I'll finish with music and 2 songs that didn't make my health & wellness musical playlist post. My 2 favorite songs ever, which are quite dichotomous if you're familiar with them, are "
Under Pressure" by Queen & David Bowie and "
The Decline" by NOFX. The musical styles are quite different in one is "classic" rock and one is punk, but the lyrics from both resonate very deeply with me, especially these:
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
and love dares you to care for
the people living on the edge of the night
and love dares you to change our way of
caring about ourselves...
Fellow members of
"Club We've Got Ours"
I'd like to introduce you to our host
He's got his, I've got mine
Meet the decline
