My Discover is Your Discover
In graduate school my focus was on Addiction Theory. As such, I study the four major theories of the time, Enlightenment, Moral, Medical, and Compensatory Models. Anyone who is familiar with my research and practice knows I am lean to more of a Compensatory theoretical approach. I also concentrated on Intervention & Counseling Practices. The list is extensive in terms of the applications I researched and studied. The underpinning to my study, research, and practice was the discipline in psychology I was educated on, that being the Cognitive Social Theory, with Albert Bandura, Ph. D. at Stanford University, The Farm, at the lead. As any graduate student and post-graduate researcher, I fumbled my way through the counseling practices. But things change.
In 1994, I sat in a church in a small town north of Boston. As I sat there surrounded by family and friends, I sat in awe at the hundreds of people who came to pay their respect to my sister at her funeral. As I sat there, I looked upon the hanging cross, a symbol I feared as a youth. Within this somber experience, awakening to the fact my sister Martha was in arms length from me, confined in her final bed of lifeless sleep, I validated a thought. That thought was: “I will never look upon my life through eyes of regret.”
I learned from this experience and have since generalized it in everything I do. One important factor: I put down the books, set aside the models and theories and began to listen. I listened to my clients’ distress, struggles, barriers, denials, rationalizations, hopes, dreams, and attitudes. Through their struggles, I learned to learn the connections between what they thought, how they felt, and what they did with their feelings as they sought out their goals of competence. I discovered common compensatory links. It wasn’t what they were experiencing, it was what they did with what they experienced. It wasn’t they were out of control, they were trying to reestablish control. It wasn’t they were powerless, they lacked the skills necessary for empowerment, and so many more. Through them I developed my techniques on counseling, which, as most know, I refer to as skills counseling or The MyDiscover Model. Through them I learned.
Due to the fact the MyDiscover Model was born from conflict, discomfort, distress and despair, my goal is it returns and becomes YourDiscover.
