Archive
fall gardening
I’ve gotten to do a bit of gardening after work yesterday and some this morning, nice fall stuff. Back by Myrtle’s greek myrtle grave blanket I extended the bed to the west to put in some tulips and daffodils with crocus on the front. Its by the bird feeder so i thought dad would enjoy the crocuses when he feeds the birds this spring. I had first extended that bed to the south and put in a row of daylilies i had gotten from the market. So I pulled out one that needed to be split out of the bed i inherited that’s no shaded by the neighbor’s privacy fence. I figured they’d do better in the sunnier locale and the hill of crab grass could someday be a hill of daylilies. I also figure in three years or so the myrtle will have spread and I can move them when they need to split again.
That left me with two myrtles left from the too big clump i dug up. I threw them in containers, through the grass in the compost and gave everything a drink. I guess that was friday. Saturday i did three groups all of which were cool but somewhat intense and i was cashed after six hard days. It was dark before I got any gumption back and that got spent watching football with dad and eric. go mizzou. could hear the cheers from the stadium. It also allowed me to definitively id the source of the snatches of marching band music i wonder if i hear and that weird metronome that kind of vibrates through you. nice to know the ominous thump has an external source.
So flowers in lieu of float. I dug up a small bed north of the myrtle bed and put in the two daylilies. Considered breaking up another goodly sized clump in the shade and make a matching row but i also wanted to get some other things done, like relax. I put in tulip clumps between them, thought they might come up through the expanding myrtle some day, we’ll see.
brought in mom’s ficus. which involves a lot of moving stuff and sweeping. it really grew this summer, just getting heavy. i’ll need to work out before next year. rearranged, cooked and ate. now dad and i are going to watch timecrimes.
Sunday i had planned to float the Lemine with several friends but one canceled do too back injury and i pulled the plug on the remainder of the 3.
Camping in the Rolla District
Finally got our Fall camping trip in. It was a little on the cool side Dad likes the lows in the 50s but was also pretty motivated to get Fido out in the woods so he said it would be a go with an expected low of 49. We drove down Saturday in typical Dad fashion about 45 minutes before we had planned to leave. That way I still got to go to the market. We had decided to get dinner in Rolla so we wouldn’t have to cook but I grabbed some hot dogs from the local beef guy and we’ve been sitting on a bag of marshmallows for a while.
We drove down to Rolla got on 44 West and got off at the J exit. We also stopped at a tourist trap because we weren’t hungry enough for dinner so I could get some hot dog buns and I grabbed a jar of Amish style pickled eggs, which turned out to be really good. We took J down to M and then left on forest service road 1208. We followed it the required two miles from blacktop for dispersed camping. There was a spot where the road turns to trail that would have worked but it wasn’t an existing spot. We ended up driving back about a half mile where there was a cleared area by the road where they had done some logging and we camped there. Built a fire pit in a low spot. Since no one had ever camped there but they had logged there there was ample wood extremely close.
Took Fido for a hike and we found a sandy area where wild turkeys wallowed in the sand. We also saw lots of asters mostly the purple but some blue ones too. Fido enjoyed being free in the woods quite a bit. He did not want to get back in the truck when we left on Sunday. Can’t say I blame him.
We roasted weenies and I toasted some marshmallows and we sat around the campfire. I slept out by the fire to enjoy the stars. When the wind it would whistle through the pines. When it was softer it would rattle the dry leaves much like Aspen. There was some Fall color but peek seems a couple weeks back. We hope to get back then if the lows stay high.
It was a nice spot for Fall camping. Its low and tends toward wet. Oh and I forgot to mention the chiggers. Got et up pretty good, probably from sleeping on the ground though it was in the dirt and not in the grass. But they mostly got my legs and they like stretchy waste bands and stuff and i only had my thermal long johns on at night.
complaint free me
Last week was long and challenging. I’m working around a couple people’s work schedule and just working more in general. I went in last weekend and got caught up a bit which felt good the first part of the week when i could knock out some little things because i didn’t have the constantly existing backlog. Last session Wednesday I fell behind and then never got a chance to get caught back up. Jamming all day every day and falling a bit more behind. I’m not complaining just painting a context for where i was at friday afternoon when a co-worker asked if she could incorporate acomplaintfreeworld.org bracelets in her group. How it works is you where a bracelet and every time you complain you move it to the other arm. You do that until it stays on one wrist for 21 days. She said its 21 days because scientists say that’s how long it takes to form a habit. I questioned that. Sounds more like folk wisdom. She likes the gratitude angle and I do too. I asked her if gratitude has a downside. If it does we didn’t know it. I discussed venting, and she offered a venting exception, which I pooh poohed. Venting has a dark side, the rehearsal for a blow out. It keeps negative emotions alive when sometimes they just need to pass I told her. I said there has to be a way of letting off steam without complaining and I put it on. I said I would probably have to wear it for years. She said she ordered a 100 for when it wears out. It was late in the day and served as a nice reminder. I would’ve complained twice before leaving work if I hadn’t been wearing it. The bracelet was working. After work started to putter around the yard, beautiful day and a lot of projects to do. learned dad hadn’t eaten yet except for some candy. so i didn’t garden but got right on supper. i was already complaining and switching the bracelet. Dad had talked about cooking together because he had gotten all the stuff for walnut crusted chicken breast and a broccoli side dish out of Wednesdays Columbia Tribune. I washed the dishes and Dad talked about his day. Amy had come over with Olive Oil to play with Fido and Dad told me the blow by blow. Olive stayed over while Amy went to the dentist. she brought a box of tea and a bag of starbucks house blend. I’m pretty thankful for Amy. Comes over twice a week and hangs out with the popster for puppy play dates. I read through the recipes and decided to chop up everything then start the water for the pasta. i was chopping the walnuts when dad came to cook to. said i should crush the walnuts with a pop bottle. I told him advice wasn’t help and swapped the bracelet. i said i would just cook. the chicken called for chicken breasts pounded down to 1/2 ” thick. salt and fresh ground pepper on them. then you dip them in egg white and roll them in corn meal with cayenne. back in the egg white and then roll them in chopped walnuts. fry in olive oil until done. the broccoli dish called for boiling some pasta for 5 minutes, add broccoli, finish boiling pour off all but 1/4 cup add 2 tbsp olive oil and a clove diced garlic. the chicken took a lot longer than i anticipated and my rice pasta fell apart. sliced some maters, a black plum, yellow teardrop, what was supposed to be a green zebra but they keep turning orange (orange zebra?), and a store bought with some cottage cheese. Dad was trying to tell me about amy and michael’s date night, i told him i was busy, he said what, i yelled i was busy, 2 complicated dishes after a long complicated day i could not listen too. i couldn’t move the bracelet my hands were gooked up with chicken gook i totally lost my composure. i took a breath decided to complain again so it was on the right wrist and just get ‘er done. supper was excellent, the chicken really out of this world. the broccoli was tasty as well even dripping in gloppy rice scum. dad was complimentary. said he could see where i was coming from. it was really sweet. saturday though i got going rehashing friday night to sarah and harry. made my point about venting. there wasn’t anything unresolved, we talked about it fine, i was heard, it was acknowledged. the next day gripe was resentment pure and simple, with no need. a few more incidental complaints then i hit a stride. today complaint free, even though dad told me “quit complaining” when i was telling him he shouldn’t be buying the dog junk food treats. that was just telling him my view on our shared beast even if he knew and even if i’d said it before. mostly though i’ve just been a bit more positive. It’d be easy to take out my frustrations on dad, he’s around, it can be frustrating as i start to pick up even more of the upkeep of the house. but it wouldn’t be right. it wouldn’t be what i am about. i am looking forward to hitting day 3 tomorrow and being more grateful and less resentful.
OCD – notes
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/447413_6
Spitznagel compared orbitofrontal and dorsolateral patterns of frontal lobe dysfunction implicated in subjects with OCD and schizotypy respectively, in subjects with either condition and in a mixed group with OCD and schizotypy. Results confirmed orbitofrontal type problems, such as difficulty changing cognitive set, in the OCD group only.
Cavedini[48*] on the other hand reported decision-making impaired in OCD compared to controls and panic subjects, with impairment predictive of a poorer pharmacological response for OCD. Jurado[49*] assessed memory for temporal order as well as a ‘feeling-of-doing’ judgement, finding these impaired in OCD; in a second study incidental memory for frequency was impaired in OCD.[50*]
Another interesting aspect of memory is negative priming, whereby ignoring a particular stimulus can hamper subsequent attended processing of the same stimulus. Negative priming is reduced in OCD, consistent with reduced inhibitory function. This is further explored in a study comparing schizophrenia, OCD and controls, which demonstrated differences in negative priming in OCD subtypes of checkers versus non-checkers, with differences varying with response-stimulus interval. A related tack is that of directed forgetting, based on evidence that OCD patients show impaired ability to forget negative material, with limited further support from a study comparing OCD and anxious controls.
hus Pelissier[58*] examined inductive and deductive reasoning in a small comparison of OCD, generalized anxiety disorder and non-anxious controls. OCD subjects showed differences on some tasks in probabilistic reasoning and greater conviction, echoing some of the cognitive distortions found in OCD.
http://www.brainphysics.com/refractory.php
Very few patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) ever experience a complete remission of symptoms. Often a clinician stops working with the patient, or the patient stops working with the clinician, once symptoms have been reduced to tolerable levels. Although symptoms may have only reduced by a third, if the person is able to function, this may be considered “good enough.”
Treatment resistant OCD is generally defined by two adequate attempts with SRIs. SRIs stand for a class of medication called antidepressants. They include tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). True treatment-refractory OCD can only be determined if a person has tried, at a minimum, three different SSRIs at a maximum dosage for at least 3 to 6 months each (with the TCA clomipramine being one of them). They must have also undergone behavioral therapy while on a therapeutic dose of an SSRI, and lastly, have received at least two atypical anti-psychotics as augmenters while receiving behavioral therapy and taking the SSRIs.The researchers found that the factors associated with refractoriness of OCD were more severe of symptoms, chronic course of illness, lack of a partner, being unemployed, low economic status, presence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms of sexual or religious content, and greater family accommodation of the OC symptoms. However, this was but one small study, and future studies are warranted to verify these findings.
Opiates: Researchers have postulated that the opiod system in the brain plays some role in the OCD circuitry. Several research studies indicate that opiates (like morphine) may be promising treatment for OCD alone or combined with SSRIs.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy: It is imperative that proper behavior therapy is attempted before being labeled treatment refractory. As stated, most OCD sufferers have not received an adequate trial of behavioral therapy, which is ultimately the most effective way to beat OCD long-term. While behavioral therapy and medication both have very similar results, up to 80 percent of OCD sufferers relapse when off medication.
http://www.brainphysics.com/therapy.php
At one time, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was thought of as a “neurotic” disorder. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychotherapy, devoted considerable attention to OCD, and believed that OCD existed on a spectrum ranging from obsessive-compulsive personality to psychosis.
His treatment of choice was psychoanalytic therapy for OCD, and this was the accepted treatment of the disorder for many decades. Because this approach was met with no success, OCD was considered a rare and intractable disorder.
People who suffer from OCD usually have at least some insight into their behaviors, making the ultimate goal of insight less useful; insight alone is not enough to “cure” OCD.
We now understand that OCD has, in large part, a biological causation (meaning, for example, that OCD behavior is not simply caused by a bad relationship with your mother), and it tends to run in families. Because of the failure of traditional psychological treatments for OCD, cognitive-behavioral treatments are now used in the treatment of the disorder, with very high rates of success.
Mild cases of OCD can be treated with self-help techniques. The book Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive Compulsive Behavior
The goal of CBT is two-fold: to change thoughts and behaviors. Changes in thoughts and behaviors then lead to changes in feelings. The cognitive portion involves the identification and analysis of irrational thoughts, which are then challenged. In the behavioral portion, the therapist and client work together to change the compulsive behaviors. This typically includes techniques such as Exposure and Ritual Prevention, also called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP or EXRP), psychoeducation (learning about OCD and how symptoms are maintained), relaxation techniques, and many others.
Exposure and Ritual Prevention is successful 80 percent of the time in significantly reducing obsessions and compulsion, making it the most effective and well-researched treatment for OCD. A person suffering from OCD feels obsessions, which cause extreme anxiety, and is then driven to perform compulsions, which momentarily relieve the anxiety. The goal of EXRP is to expose the OCD sufferer directly to their anxiety-causing obsessions, and then prevent them from performing a ritualistic compulsion to relieve the anxiety. EXRP is a hierarchical process. The therapist has the patient rank their fears from most distressing to least distressing. After the fears are ranked, the patient will then be exposed to each fear as they are ready, starting with the easiest item. The therapist does not force the client do anything the client does not want to do, so great care is taken to be sure the client is ready for the next step. The OCD patient eventually learns that the obsessions are not harmful and the anxiety diminishes on its own over time.
Because even the thought of confronting ones fears can prevent many patients from seeking CBT for OCD, many wonder if it is possible to bypass the behavioral portion of the therapy. Cognitive therapy alone can be helpful if a patient is unable to participate in the behavioral exercises, but the behavioral part of the treatment is the real key to success. Research seems to indicate that cognitive-behavioral therapy for OCD is better than cognitive therapy alone.
The therapist will typically assign daily homework and take periodic ratings of symptoms to be sure the patient is improving. The therapist will push the patient somewhat, because ultimately most people need someone to drive them at least a little for effective treatment, but not more than they can handle. It is a difficult process, but very effective and rewarding. EXRP treatment can be accomplished in seventeen 90-minutes sessions, twice per week.
CBT is also effective for most anxiety disorders and many OC spectrum disorders. Learn more about CBT for OCD…
weeding and wild onion pottage
It was a beautiful sunday here in como. What I love most about fall here is how spring like it becomes with little delicate shoots coming up that this yankee always associates with spring. its a bit of hope as the days get shorter and the nights get colder. My lettuce is doing surprisingly well considering how dog trampled it is. One of Fido’s set piece runs goes right through the middle of all three rows. One of the two surviving chards looks like its going to do something protected by the okra, which continues to produce. I wish I would have thrown plastic over the main bed its gonna be cold tonight. Mom’s ficus is outside too, Dad talked me down from rearranging the living room and bringing it in today. Its gonna warm up tomorrow night he says. I had other things to do and didn’t get in the garden until late. the sunny part was in the beds along the privacy fence. my best find was about 10 little coreopsis coming up in a place i’ve never gotten anything to grow. the daylillies i planted are doing well, the ones that came with a place have boomed back and i think i am going to split a clump maybe two and move into a sunnier spot, maybe by myrtle’s myrtle. a hillside of lillies seems lovely. the ragwort continues to spread and i dead headed the rose tulips the only thing blooming in the backyard besides the rose of sharon flanking the hidden gate. I had seriously turned the compost yesterday so it cleaned it up to get a nice tier of plant stuff and had a bit of a mix of green and brown. considered raking but will wait until the redbud completely loses it. Outfront a couple of asters are booming the periwinkle blue ones and a vibrant purple one. I’m gonna move the purple one in the spring it was crowded got weedy and fell over. Its a crazy purple clump hanging over the corner of my driveway. quirky but not what i was going for. while i was weeding i noted the wild onions which i thought (correctly) would be excellent for pottage. I took most of a cup of lentils, 1/3 cup white rice, 2/3 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup of olive oil, 1/3 tsp salt, and almost 3 cups water, plus a couple of bay leaves from the mom’s tree of the guy at MO Wildflowers Nursery and maybe 3 tbsp wild onion greens. did it in the rice cooker, very good but a bit el dente for dad i think. He was mute on the meal but ate it. Next time 3 1/2 cups water and i think it will be it.
Low Car Challenge
Every September Columbia has a No Car Challenge where participants agree not to drive or ride in motorized transport that is not the bus. I’ve wanted to do it since I got here and this year I was able to do the Low Car version where I still I still got to drive for a weekend. I didn’t think it would be much of an issue as I ‘ve been car-less almost half my adult life, i live a block from my work, and Columbia is a very bikable city.
I didn’t decide to do it until the night of September 30 so I couldn’t stock up on stuff ahead of time. Right off the bat I wanted to get some stuff for my Labor Day trip to Detroit but couldn’t rustle up the energy to ride my bike across town. I put it off once after a hard day at work, was rushed the night before and wanted to mow the lawn before leaving as well. I decided I’d stop by there on my way to pick up Trevor to go to the airport but it wasn’t open yet. Couldn’t lay hands on a 3 oz or less tube of toothpaste and so was forced to throw away a brand new 4 oz tube on the flight back. It really set the stage for the month with a lot more going without, a little bit more of doing things in a wasteful way, and very little actual bike riding.
On the way home from the airport on the final leg of the trip the truck crapped out on me on the highway and I had to leave it a foreign auto repair place in Wentzville and have Dad pick me up. That forced me to later go pick up the truck (the alternative of paying storage for a month seemed ridiculous so i considered it an extension of my original weekend allowed driving). We didn’t deduce what was wrong until me, the mechanic and the truck were all in the same place. Alternator brushes were shot leaving to come and go electrical problems. It was too late for him to fix it so i had to limp home hoping it would make it and driving through dusk with no headlights. it was all good and the mostly inoperable truck would be less of a temptation to drive.
The Challenge got me to break out my bicycle for the first time in 2010. It was good to ride and Sarah rode her bike over for our usual Farmers Market trip. It was fun to ride and we noticed we spent about twice as much time and were much more social because neither of us were eager to get back on our bikes to ride home. On the bad side I only bought about half as much stuff. No mum this year and I missed the last two weeks of sweet corn. All of my purchases were made with a lot more consideration for weight and volume since I only had what I could put in my backpack. I also wanted to get a lot of food because I couldn’t easily run by the store. I ended up only getting half as much as normal which was my first clue that not driving might not be an unmitigated good anymore.
I did some bike riding for fun rode to the market and the bank a couple of times. I was getting into it a bit but it was also making my back sore. One of my physical therapists had ID’d long distance bike riding of how I’d bulged my C-6 & 7 in my misspent youth when i was biking 150 miles a week. Mostly I skipped going to the store so there was less groceries. So we started walking to the Country Kitchen a lot and even resorted to eating at Bandanas.
Dad’s truck crapped out and still won’t start (hope its just batteries) so we were without a reliable vehicle. I couldn’t externalize my driving to the popster as I’d hoped he’d pick up the slack on the grocery shopping but instead stopped being able to do it all. I broke out the bike to go to the market and the tire was flat. So no farmers market at all. We needed stuff: food, ensure, booze. So I walked down to Mosers got a back pack and some bags worth and humped it all back. That was cool, nostalgic from when I was living in Berkeley and shopping by back pack.
I was bushed though and couldn’t muster up the energy to walk across town to get to Trevor and Lisa’s potluck. I decided to try to get my rewards card for the free flat tire fix rumored to be on it rather than walk down to Klunks. I also got to skip the bank by using the cash back option at the grocery store.
At this point a bit of a depression set in, short on stuff, dad rationing his ensures cuz he can’t drive and get more. fretting on him on how he’s going to get to walmart when his blood pressure pills run out. I tried to walk to the PedNet office to get my rewards card after the most difficult morning of my professional career but couldn’t make it down in time on my lunch hour and they close early. I got some taco bell instead and decided, fuck it, I’ll wait until i can drive.
I gutted it out but not with a lot of joy. Mostly I learned my truck is pretty decent. I get good mileage bundle my trips, don’t routinely drive and maybe put on 5K a year these days. I would’ve used it to go camping, build some trails in the Overland Bottoms, perhaps go to the EcoArt Fest down on the river. I would have bought three times as much market products in the month. I would have eaten out less and not at the soulless chains that are by my house. On the plus, it got me riding, it set an example, it focused me on my own locale. It showed me what driving means to me. Next year I expect to do it again.
An interview for a human services class
Looking back over my posts I have really only posted about work. I use my blog not just for public education and edification but for my own researches to be able to put stuff together at home and access it at work. Some of it is pretty popular as well. I hope to put something together this weekend about my experiences with the low car challenge and just talk about something else besides work. My big take home is that I have been working too much and its starving the rest of my life of space. Eventually I will have to deal with that. With that being said a co-worker recently interviewed me for her class on Human Services and I decided to re-post it here. I considered putting in a little edit here and there and then decided to just let it be. Every summation of anything has some possible inaccuracies and I like the thing as a whole. My story is so long and complicated I was most interested in how someone else would wrap it up. Here it is:
For this assignment, I interviewed Michael Trapp, Senior Counselor for Phoenix Programs, Inc., in Columbia, Missouri. Mike has a masters degree in Sociology and holds a RASAC II certificate (Registered Associate Substance Abuse Counselor II.)
Mike has been in the human services field for approximately 20 years. He has worked in a variety of places including: domestic violence shelter, group homes for mental, physical, and/or developmentally disabled persons, activist for environmental issues, and was also a case worker for the project the began studies to legalize medicinal marijuana in California. Mike has worked with a variety of different people and problems during his career and wears quite a different hats within his personal and professional life. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after working in human services for 7 years and has also become an ordained minister.
Mike currently provides individual counseling, group education/counseling services, supervises clinical staff, provides mental health specialty services to a special needs population with issues of complexity. Mike says “we try to address all issues as primary because they are interconnected” As far as dealing with people with disabilities, “you don’t have to be an expert on that person’s disability, you just have to be willing to learn. They are experts on their situation, let them teach you.” Mike went on to say that it it good for human services workers to have some basic understanding of persons with disabilities because they will always be there, in every avenue that you could ever work in, they will be there and they will need help. “People feel validated if you know something about their disability, but being willing to learn is the next best thing, I always try to do a bit of homework prior to a session with someone with a disability so I have a basic understanding and it enables me to get a better understanding of where they are.”
One of the biggest challenges and needs is case management because they have specialized needs and services that are required to help them maintain their independence and it takes more effort and time to provide those services, but it’s very rewarding when you are able to help someone. Another challenge is being able to effectively communicate with those who are deaf. Deaf clients are more concrete and do not thing in the abstract, they are used to nodding and indicating that they understand as it is what we expect, however they generally don’t understand everything. In sessions, with interpreter present a deaf client will only pick up about 50% of the information. It isn’t the interpreters job to make sure the client understands, they are there to interpret. It is our job as human service providers to help them understand and to check in with them during the session or conversation to ensure that they understand what is going on. Deaf clients, and autistic clients as well, do not think in words, they think in pictures. So, when explaining something, it is better to paint a picture of what you are describing rather than try to explain that same thing with generalized words. Additionally, it is important to explain words and teach vocabulary when possible. You have to talk on the level of the client, without talking to them. Don’t talk above their head, as they won’t understand and you won’t be effective.
I asked Mike about his own dealing with being diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and how it has affected his career. He said that he felt he was a really good counselor prior to “going insane” although, after he was able to come to terms and handle his disorder (and has since been able to self monitor and cope without the use of medications through different coping techniques and self realization techniques) that he became a better counselor! He admits that he did not freely disclose to his employers of his diagnosis as he didn’t want to be labeled or feared being written off if he became too emotional. However, he did reveal his diagnosis to clients as it helped validate him. He could honestly say that he understood the disorder and what a person was dealing with. He says that he is an expert on his own diagnosis and that even his doctors will admit that they don’t know as much as he does about the disorder. He lives it and feels it everyday, they only know what they have been taught. So, it is easier for clients to relate to him when they find out that he is dealing with a mental disorder as well.
I have known Mike for over 3 years and was shocked when he revealed his disorder to me over 2 years ago. My prior experiences with persons with bipolar disorder had tainted my view of the disorder and honestly scared me a bit. I have to say that I would have never known that Mike had bipolar disorder had he not told me. He has led quite an interesting life, is highly intelligent, a great role model, advocate, and a great friend. He treats clients with respect and dignity and goes the extra mile to help everyone he possibly can. He has changed my views of the bipolar disorder and continues to amaze and surprise me with his efforts and creativity. As I stated before, Mike wears many hats both personally and professionally, and I would have to say that he falls into all 4 categories of functions of human service providers; teacher/consultant, broker, activist, and counselor. I have personally witnessed him taking active rolls in all 4 categories, however if I had to pick the strongest, I would have to probably pick counselor, although it is a hard call with the way he encompasses all aspects of a clients needs by providing advocacy, support, resources, general assistance, counseling, teaching, etc. I feel I am really lucky to work with such a person!
Student 2: I am so glad that your opinion of him did not change when you found out that he had a disability. Many people would have begun to view him differently. (My response to student 2) My opinion of him did not change – although my opinion of what bipolar was all about did!
Student 3: Laura, your interview was inspiring and from what you have written , Micheal sounds very comfortable in his own skin in the profession.
Instructor: I love his advice for working with Deaf consumers! (My response to instructor) Thanks! I thought this was really important to share! He referred to it as if one were translating a foreign language and how so much gets lost in the translations as our words are not the same. I thought that was a great analogy!
Instructor: Yes, And I think it’s helpful to know that even with the use of a qualified interpreter, there still may be issues lost in translation. There are very real and significant communication barriers between the Deaf and hearing individuals. And, because of the historical discrimination and mistreatment, many Deaf people are very suspicious and distrusting of hearing people. They may feel that they are ‘missing’ something or being scammed/taken advantage of.
Student 4: He made some important statements about being in contact with pwd in almost all areas of life. Its good to have some idea of the different disabilities, but also be able to have an open mind about learning and listening to get an idea of the best help that can be given.
Student 5: Laura. It sounds as though mr. Trapp has his plate full, I have a lot of respect for any one who works with drug or alcohol rehab programs, addiction is a hard thing to quit.
Laura Cameron
Multiconstruct 
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