The Best Part of Working in Mental Health

Best Part of Working in Mental Health Transcript

Kathy Knochel

There are several things about being a counselor that I really enjoy. Probably, primarily, just the ability to meet someone at a very vulnerable point and having the opportunity to walk alongside of them and help them understand what their goals are and where they’re wanting to head and then being able to walk alongside of them.

It probably goes without saying, but my favorite part of the job is just when you start to see growth and change in someone. There’s nothing better than after you’ve walked with somebody through a really difficult time that they come in and can say things like, I’ve just noticed that things have been going so much better.

I’ve just noticed that I’m not experiencing as much anxiety, or I am connecting better with the people in my life or things like that. And so really being able to see that growth and see how God’s working in someone’s life really makes this job rewarding.

Ron Messner

I think it would be hard to say exactly what it is that’s satisfying in a specific kind of way, but it’s when you see somebody actually getting either enough insight or information or skills or whatever that is, where they actually change something about their life and it becomes either I’m not as distressing or more fulfilling, or they feel more of a peace about it, or they know where they want to go.

But when you see them changed in a way that life’s going to be good, and particularly if it’s a combination of the spiritual and emotional together where there’s a sense of peace and that they’ve resolved whatever they were confused or not handling well in a mental health way. But where they see God in that and realize either better who God is or how they can serve him better or where they’re in a better relationship with him because of what they understand.

Kaleb Beyer

Certainly, a part of the work that we do at ACCFS is those couples that find themselves in a place that they didn’t imagine they would be in. And so, we’re somewhat reactive at times in the way that we approach treatment. I would also say a growing number, which is really delightful, is couples that just want to grow the relationship.

There’s not glaring kinds of areas of distress, conflict, or concern. They just want a deeper connection and they’re open. They’re ready to engage. They’re wanting to dig in. And this is a population that’s really enjoyable to work with. And there’s a lot of opportunities of deepening their relationship.

So, when life’s storms and transitions inevitably come, there’s a vibrant connection that they have to be able to face through. And some of those skills are built on a good foundation and they’re building a stronger one.

Craig Stickling

The piece that I’ve appreciated or learned to love over the years in working with kids is, I’ve been amazed, even for young kids, like I said, God’s given them a brain that’s trying to figure things out.

And I’ve found with kids, when we pour in information that is helping them with the issue at hand, whether it’s relational, or even in a mental health way, or even an emotional regulation piece, when we’re able to pour in good content for them, to be able to trust that, okay, they have a brain, their brain is ready for some of this, and to be able to pour some of that in, I’m just amazed at what some are able to do with that.

It’s almost like they’re like I’ve been waiting for this. My brain’s trying to figure out where I’m at or the struggles and challenges, but I just haven’t had that content, that specific content information poured into me in specific way and to be able to pour into be part of that piece is, I just love that part of my job.

Brian Sutter

I mean, some of the things I really love about my work is, is just getting to interact with people, a variety of people in this journey of counseling. Often it starts with difficulty, with brokenness, and this pain and struggle. And you start off for them as well as for me, like, what’s this journey going to look like?

And boy, I don’t know exactly the path forward. But I would say as that unfolds and that brokenness comes, I’ve walked that journey with enough individuals at this point that now there’s this great anticipation. There’s this anticipation like something’s going to happen. Anyway, in that counseling room, it’s like, I’m just waiting and interested in is this one of those times that freedom, or that lightbulb has come on, or God has done something that’s unexplainable? And I get to just be an observer to that.

And it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, that is like those moments like, yeah, that’s good, boy, this is really sweet. This is a really sweet thing, and just try to soak that up. Those moments, those sweet moments where there’s some understanding, or freedom, or healing, or, you know, there’s been this sweet interaction for them in a relationship that’s been broken, and I get to be a part of that, that’s really special.

Ted Witzig

What really captivates me about this field is because it’s really working with the four main areas that God built people in. You could break this in different ways, but they’re physical and biological, emotional, relational, and spiritual. And the counseling field really works at the at the intersections of those. And that’s what I really love about this is because while not every issue involves all of those things equally, or maybe at all, many of them do.

I love the fact that when we’re working with the whole person and as a Christian in this field to have a worldview that has a way to understand brokenness and to understand hurt things in this life, but also to understand God’s grace and his healing and redemption and reconciliation are close to God’s heart.

That makes this really exciting to me. It gives me a framework to understand that things are broken, but also that God is making everything new. Some of the things that I love about this field are walking with people as they move through this place where they come in and oftentimes they’re struggling or suffering in some way and their main focus is oftentimes on the pain.

It is for me too. When my tooth hurts, my focus is on pain. So, that’s not a criticism, but that’s where they’re focused. But one of the reasons I love doing this work and I love doing it here is because we don’t just focus on symptom reduction. Symptom reduction is important, and that is a focus. We want to relieve suffering, and we believe that the Lord would like that. But beyond that, you know what I love is when somebody then comes through that, and as they start to learn about their identity in Christ, as they start to see how their depression or OCD or their trauma has shifted their God image and how they picture God and relate to God.

And that starts to heal. And they come to see God as a Heavenly Father and they are his child and loved and safe in that. And to be able to then see them move through that area of hope. They’ve gone from suffering to relief of suffering to hope and identity in that. And now they’re thinking about now, how do I take this hurt that has been redeemed and now how do I go out and be part of that solution? And I just love that because that is God taking something that in and of itself is not good, I mean, the trauma, the accident, the assault, the whatever kind of condition, but that by His grace and through the body of believers working together, He can take those things.

And I don’t mean it’s easy all the time, or that everything is fixed all the time. But he can do with it what we can’t do. And I just love it when I see a dad who gets something under control in his life that might have been not in a good place, but that he doesn’t just control the behavior, he learns to become a godly man that loves and serves his family in a way that is going to impact the next several generations.

That’s beyond what I can do. But I love being able to see, you get a front row seat to what God is doing.

Panel Collaboration Transcript

Brian Sutter

One of the things I really appreciate about working here at ACCFS is being a part of a team and being able to collaborate together to learn from each other, to draw from your expertise and your experiences. I think it might be helpful to take a few minutes to talk about how we do that, what are some of the different settings and meetings that we have to not only sharpen our own skills individually, but then also how that maybe helps us serve our clients even better. Ted, why don’t you start us off by just sharing a little bit about individual supervision, how that plays out, and how that fits into this.

Ted Witzig

Yeah. So, for all of us, having individual supervision, sometimes called clinical supervision, was a really important part of particularly our early years in counseling because we have to have so many hours of supervision.

That means working under somebody who’s licensed and it’s a way to learn, it’s a way to when you’re just stepping into the field where everything feels new, you’re seeing your firsts of things, and many of us can remember the first time you saw somebody with trauma or with panic attacks or whatever.

And being able to have that weekly meeting or whatever that was with a supervisor to go, okay, so what do I do here? And oftentimes early on, supervision is just about figuring out what do I do and learning your style. The goal is that the supervisor is helping you develop your style and your flow of answering questions.

And, and everybody has a style, but at the beginning we all come in thinking there’s a right answer to this and I have to know the right answer for every situation and that feels anxious. Over time, as you get more familiar and things of that nature, getting licensed, supervision kind of moves instead to oftentimes  a weekly thing that has to be structured. Here it depends on the licensure and experience of the counselor.

We’ll meet maybe monthly, maybe every other week, whatever it is, and it gives you an opportunity, gives everybody an opportunity to say, hey, these are the cases I have questions about, or I feel stuck on. Or particularly then when there’s an issue that comes up, when abuse or legal and ethical things come up. It’s really important that we have people to bounce that off of. That’s one of the kinds of the things we’ve been told about in your training. How many times did you hear somebody say in your training, document and consult, document and consult? And that’s one of the things that we do is work together.

Ron Messner

So, I’d like to just put in a little, maybe for others, if they ask the question that the individual supervision is different prior to being licensed than after. So, as we complete our licensing requirements and the formal requirements are taken care of, there’s still a strong ethical and professional expectation that we get supervision because we’re expected to grow and to learn and to use others.

Brian Sutter

Yeah. And even in that, it seems like for me, sometimes when you’re in the midst of it, you miss even things that are fairly obvious and then be able to question in a group and they’re like, well, did you think about this? Or, you may have thought about this, and you’re like, actually, you know, I should have, but I missed that.

Ted Witzig

Yeah. And it’s another great opportunity for me to remind you all to do testing. Hey, I think we should test, I think we should do an assessment.

Ron Messner

We know that we are considered the bigger system and I understand this person lives in the community and with people and others and is influenced by their culture. Do a genogram. Yeah, right. Yes. Understand three generations. Yes. .

Brian Sutter

So, another one of those things that we do as a staff together is case consultations. And Kathy, would you mind sharing a little bit about what that looks like?

Kathy Knochel

Yes, absolutely. So, case consultations we do typically about once a month.

And what that is, each month each counselor takes a turn to share a case that is more complex. And so, if we think about this, if we go back and think about individual supervision and group supervision. One of the things with that is this is not a time to just talk about cases and talk about information, but it is very much so centered on here’s the diagnosis and clarifying, is this an accurate diagnosis? And here are the presenting difficulties. Here’s some background. So, it’s very structured conversation that we’re having.

And so that’s similar in case consultation. We have just very structured discussion. Here is the diagnosis that is happening. Here are presenting difficulties. And then also here’s where I’m feeling a little bit stuck as the therapist. I don’t know how to move them past this point. And so, the benefit of having this time is all the other counselors are able to hear it. And then they’re able to let me know, here’s a blind spot you might have in this or here’s an experience that I have had, and this intervention maybe is better suited. And then case consultation helps prepare me for the next session with this individual.

Brian Sutter

I appreciate what you’re mentioning there too. To clarify that when we do any of these individual group or case consultation. It’s just the clinical staff and our focus isn’t just about sharing information about a particular individual. Confidentiality is still important to us and we take that very seriously. And it’s really a purpose around sharing pertinent information so that we can help sharpen each other and serve each other through supervision.

Ted Witzig

The purpose is twofold. One is so that we are doing the best job as therapists, but ultimately it’s so that the client is served, right? That’s what we’re really wanting. I mean, in fact, when your cases are going well and things are going super, those cases are going to rarely show up in a supervision. But, when you’ve got attorneys involved and different kinds of things, we have to be on our A game, maybe our A+ game during those kinds of things. And it’s great to have a team.

Brian Sutter

Yeah, and truly, our desire, the reason why we’re in the field is wanting to help, right? And so, often, situations we recognize we’re not able to do it in and of ourselves. So, obviously we’re relying on the Lord. We’re relying on the Spirit working through us and we were relying on the multitude of counselors to help us be effective in trying to be helpful, which is why we’ve come into the field.

Ron Messner

So, I’m curious as you’re sharing that, how well do you think our clients understand that confidentiality applies to the clinical group? So, that when I go over confidentiality or when they sign off on that, they understand I’m not going to church to talk about it, not going to talk to the front office about it.

I wonder how well they understand, but we will talk to each other and not for the sake of just people knowing who we’re seeing, those kinds of things, but specifically for that clinical person purpose that we share. That confidentiality is absolute. It exists. We all know there are certain exceptions to it, legal exceptions, but within our group of clinical people that it applies to the group.

Ted Witzig

Yeah, I think that’s why it really falls to us, the responsibility to have really high integrity around that because, because fears of loss of confidentiality are huge when somebody comes to a counselor.

Ron Messner

You know, it’s interesting. I would absolutely agree with you, but I’ve also been amazed the whole time I’ve been involved about the high trust level that people bring, you know, they sign the form, there’s legal pieces, but it’s a rare client that actually takes you to the wire. What does that mean? That’s who you’re going to tell. They automatically assume the integrity.

Brian Sutter

It’s also interesting to me, somebody here recently I was talking to, like, they found great comfort in me saying, you know what, I think I’m going to take this to the clinical staff here. And so, some get really anxious about that, and that’s unsettling. And they’re like, oh, I’d rather you not, and others are like, oh, you mean you have somebody else that might have some input that is really helpful.

Kaleb Beyer

For sure, even in the process of training, I’m still using it for supervision. It’s videotaping and I’ve been surprised how many don’t bat an eye with signing a release that I can video the session knowing that this is for the quality of care that they’re receiving. That’s pretty intimidating.

Brian Sutter

I know. It’s ours to hold on to. It’s part of the quality of care. It’s us receiving and depending on, yeah, willingness to. Honoring their story and that’s their story and that we’re not going to share it.

Kaleb Beyer

And even I think in that sometimes in supervision there are certain situations that we don’t step into specifics necessarily about a person’s name or situation and we can still receive some helpful intervention or things that are helpful in supporting a couple or an individual.

Brian Sutter

Yeah. Another one of the things that we do would be topical training, and I don’t know, Kaleb, if you could get us started on talking about that one.

Kaleb Beyer

Sure. Yeah, so, another blessing that we have is just the opportunity to share on a specific topic at different times in the year. And so, all of our training, as we’ve talked about, we’re in different backgrounds, but there’s certain criteria that we have to meet related to continuing ed throughout a given year.

And so, all of us are taking different training. Some of that’s the same training. So, the time that we meet for topical training is just an opportunity to share about things that we’re learning. Maybe it’s in the area of expertise, as we’ve talked about. We just specialize in different areas.

And so, especially with me in couple relationships, for example, it’s helpful for me to hear areas of trauma, recent trauma that have been at Brian or Ted on OCD, things that I may tiptoe in and have clients with, but I just don’t specialize in it. So, the topical training allows for time for one of us clinical staff to share more deeply on a given topic or an intervention. Sometimes we learn interventions that we find helpful. And it’s like, hey, this is better, really helpful with this particular client or population.

Brian Sutter

And one of the things we do as a staff is the triage calls that anybody can call in for a free 30-minute phone call.

And those can range so many different topics and maybe something like I haven’t thought about for so long, but the topical training feels like one of those spots where, oh, you know what, I remember Kaleb saying this about marriage and this makes me sound like I know more than I do. And in 30 minutes, you can really do well, but it’s helpful to have some exposure outside of what may be typical.

Ted Witzig

Every year, we lay out a plan for training and we lay that out as staff. There are some things that we do as a staff together, but then there’s always individual things. And so, that’s an opportunity again to be able to deepen knowledge, but also to be able to keep up with what’s happening because every year there are new things emerging.

One of the things that we’re all aware of is that the professional associations and licensure boards have expectations for how much continuing education we get each year. And then also sometimes a certain kind of continuing education, whether that’s on ethics or on abuse reporting or things of that nature.

One of the things I really appreciate about our board here at ACCFS is how supportive they’ve been to make sure that we not only get adequate training, but to be able to get training that really keeps us sharp. And that’s been a great benefit to us.

Brian Sutter

Another one of the things that we do, we interact with each other that helps kind of sharpen each other in lots of different ways would be book reviews. And that’s one that I really enjoy for a lot of different reasons. But Kathy, if you would mind sharing a little bit about that.

Kathy Knochel

So, we typically have a book that we’re reading all together as a staff. And the topics of the books vary. Sometimes they are mental health related, and sometimes they’re more from a spiritual growth perspective, which is really helpful in how we integrate Christian focus into our counseling.

And that helps us grow so each month we read about one or two chapters in a book and then we’re able to come together as staff and share like this is what I learned, or this is a new perspective I gained. I think it’s a really neat learning opportunity that we do here. Some of the other things that we’ve talked about like the supervisions and the continuing ed you find in a lot of agencies, other agencies that I’ve worked in. And so, some of these, like this ability to come together and read a book and learn from each other is just a really nice thing that we do as part of this agency.

Brian Sutter

And a lot of these other things are very formal and like there’s, you know, you’ve got to get your CEU and you’ve got to turn that in. It’s just like so many pieces that are necessary, and this is just like, we get together. We get to talk through a topic together, it’s very informal, and it’s just as much about building relationships and discussing any number of topics. I really enjoy that aspect of it.

And one of those things too, even if it’s not a Christian book that we’re reading, that’s always the thing underneath the surface we’re thinking about is like, okay, what does this look like, and how do the Scriptures speak into that? And that being an important part of, not only in those moments, but even in our individual work as well. That’s core to who we are and how we want to help.

Ron Messner

I want to comment on what you said, Kathy, about there are some things that we can do here as an agency that you wouldn’t necessarily have an option to do someplace else.

And I think it’s really neat that the board and administration, finances matter and they want to be accountable, all those things, but they see the value of giving some flexibility. So, in some settings, it would have to be a certain amount of productivity. And not the opportunity for group supervision, for the topical training, for the book reviews.

But our clients really benefit from the fact that our board and our supporters are willing to come behind that and give us the opportunity to grow in ways that we might not get to grow in in another setting that has to be more fiscally direct.

Ted Witzig

One of the other kind of training that we do is ethics training and chart the groans! So, a couple things. We groan because a lot of times if they’re very heavily legally based, oftentimes in the ethics trainings, it’s not that we want to, first of all, we want to perform up to the highest ethical standards.

And we want to, not just because a psychological association says or the state board says, we want to have that for Christ. We want our witness to be solid. We want to perform excellent in that regard. So, one of the things that happens with a lot of the ethical trainings is you’re really thinking through the things that happen very, very rarely.

Kaleb Beyer

And I think it’s important because it’s so easy to write in our case notes and not be able to back out and see it from a third-party perspective. And these situations where there’s abuse or there’s reporting to be able to see it from that angle and have each other as a different lens to be able to speak into that, I think is definitely helpful.

get a front row seat to what God is doing.