Is the glass half empty or half full???

The lessons learned continue:

1. You know all that stuff your clinical supervisors have told you about watching for changes on self-report measures, especially changes in self-reported suicidal ideation? And how if you notice a change you should follow up on that? Yeah, your supervisors are right.

2. When your clients call you to tell you they want to kill themselves, you are doing a good job. Because that means they are calling you instead of killing themselves.

3. When you can help a client make a plan to not engage in self-harm on Friday at 4pm, and then not worry about it again until Monday when it's time to check-in? That means you are adjusting. Because last time you dealt with a suicidal client on Friday afternoon, you thought about it all weekend.

4. It is possible for your client to say hello to you in the waiting room in the morning, and then try to kill himself later that afternoon. But if he calls someone in your clinic in the middle of the suicide attempt, then you are probably doing a good job (see #2).

5. If a client calls to say he can't make his appointment because he is headed into a manic episode? That is a good sign, because he is using those self-monitoring skills you talked with him about. And yes, maybe he does need his medications adjusted, and yes, that was good of him to call his psychiatrist first.

Other thoughts:

It turns out that ACT isn't so bad. It's just that Steven Hayes is a bit verbose, and I don't so much care for his way of describing things sometimes. At the very least, my clients seem to believe now that ACT will in fact help them lose weight, and my chronic pain clients say that it is helping them cope with their pain. And if they believe it, I suppose I might be able to as well.