Wednesday, April 14, 2010

2nd Visit with New Counselor (written July 2007)

Since I'm going to see my new counselor for the third time tomorrow, I thought I'd best hurry and record the highlights of my session last week. Here are some of the things we talked about:

1. "Positive Intent" This is a phrase that came up over and over again. My counselor kept telling me that every negative emotion has a positive intent. She said that actually, according to the theory of positive intents, every action has a positive intent as well. Instead of focusing on how bad if feels to have a negative emotion, she encouraged me to try to figure out what the positive intent of that emotion is...what it is trying to get me to do.

2. We talked a lot about my messy kitchen. We made a plan that I will focus on keeping 4 things clean as my first priority, because with them, I can usually make dinner: a knife, a cutting board, a pot, and the table. If the table is clean, we can sit down to eat, Adam can work on his writing, I can have a place to cut up things, and I feel less overwhelmed.

3. I received the assignment to research Daniel Goleman's concept of emotional intelligence so that we could talk about it next time. I haven't done that yet.

4. I received the assignment to search for research jobs on the LDS employment website.

We talked a lot about my plan to go to nursing school, and how that may not be the best plan for me. We talked about the fact that I may be using school as a crutch. Instead of relying on school to get me motivated to accomplish things, it would be good for me to figure out how to motivate myself to accomplish the things I want to do, like writing for a living. We talked about the three things I'd most like to do in a job, namely writing, research, and teaching. I guess I should add talking to people.

No comments: