It's Not a Gay Story! It's a Love Story- Love Is Love despite Whoever You Love...

I recently came across Nick Offerman's heartfelt Emmy speech, delivering a powerful message that resonated deeply: "It's not a gay story; it's a love story." 

In a world where love is often confined by societal norms and expectations, Nick Offerman's Emmy speech resonated deeply, reminding us that love transcends all boundaries. These simple words hold profound significance, shedding light on the enduring stigma and judgment that still shroud unconventional relationships in our society.

Love, in its purest form, knows no gender, race, or creed. Yet, throughout history, society has imposed rigid definitions of love, dictating whom we should love and how we should express it. From ancient civilizations to modern times, love has been subjected to scrutiny and discrimination.

Societal norms have a huge impact on our perceptions of love. These norms not only shape our beliefs but also influence our behaviors and attitudes toward others. The fear of judgment often prevents individuals from embracing their true selves and expressing their love freely.

However, it's time to challenge these norms and create a more inclusive and accepting society. Love is a fundamental human experience that should be celebrated in all its forms. Regardless of who you love, your love is valid and deserving of respect.

To foster this change, we must start by promoting acceptance, empathy, and understanding. By teaching tolerance and celebrating diversity, we can create a safe space where love thrives without fear of judgment.

At the heart of it all, love is love. It's a universal language that unites us all, regardless of our differences. Let us celebrate love in all its forms, championing diversity and equality in relationships. Together, we can create a world where everyone feels empowered to live openly and authentically, regardless of who they choose to love. Because ultimately, love knows no labels—it simply knows love.

I strongly recommend you hear Nick Offerman and see how he put in his share to empower and encourage people to Love... 

A Love Story is a Love Story

Exploring the History of the LGBTQIA+ Acronym

The LGBTQIA+ acronym is a vivid and ever-evolving tribute to the myriad expressions of gender identity and sexual orientation in the broad fabric of human diversity. The rich history of each letter and the tenacity of the community it represents captivate me endlessly as a psychologist.

Let us embark on a journey through time, unraveling the threads of this rainbow tapestry...

The journey begins with the letter "L," representing lesbian identity. Lesbianism has a rich historical legacy, from the poetry of Sappho in ancient Greece to the revolutionary movements of the 20th century. The struggles and triumphs of lesbian women have been instrumental in shaping the LGBTQIA+ community as we know it today.

Next, we encounter the letter "G," symbolizing gay identity. The gay rights movement erupted in the wake of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, igniting a flame of activism that continues to burn brightly. From Harvey Milk's historic election to the ongoing fight for marriage equality, gay individuals have made indelible contributions to the advancement of LGBTQIA+ rights.

The letter "B," in the spectrum represents bisexual identity. Bisexual individuals have long navigated the complexities of dual attraction, challenged societal norms, and expanded our understanding of human sexuality. Despite facing erasure and discrimination, bisexual voices continue to assert their visibility and validity within the community.

As we delve deeper, we encounter the letter "T," denoting transgender identity. Transgender individuals contrary to the conventional categorizations, assert their true selves in the face of immense societal pressure. The transgender rights movement has achieved significant milestones, yet the journey toward full acceptance and equality remains ongoing. As a queer-affirmative psychologist, I am committed to advocating for the rights and well-being of transgender individuals, affirming their identities and experiences without question.

Entwined with the fabric of LGBTQIA+ identity are the letters "Q," "I," and "A," representing queer, intersex, and asexual identities, respectively. Each letter signifies a unique aspect of human diversity, challenging conventional notions of gender and sexuality. Queer-affirmative psychology recognizes and celebrates the inherent value of all individuals, regardless of where they fall on the spectrum of identity.

Throughout history, the LGBTQIA+ community has faced adversity with courage and resilience. From the AIDS crisis of the 1980s to the ongoing fight against conversion therapy, queer individuals have stood united in the face of oppression, forging bonds of solidarity that transcend the boundaries of race, class, and nationality.

As a psychologist, I am humbled by the opportunity to bear witness to the stories of resilience and resistance that define the LGBTQIA+ experience. Each letter of the acronym represents a unique journey, a story of struggle and triumph, woven into the fabric of human history.

In the end, the LGBTQIA+ acronym is more than just a collection of letters; it is a testament to the beauty of human diversity and the power of community. 

Counseling Process through the eyes of Robert Carkhuff's Stages of Counseling

Robert Carkhuff’s Stages of Counseling or Helping Model

Robert Carkhuff’s helping model is the most researched method for training a wide range of helpers in interpersonal skills: counselors, psychotherapists, teachers, nurses, hospital attendants, supervisors, and other professionals. Carkhuff gave five stages of counseling process; Attending, Responding, Personalizing, Initiation and Evaluation, with attitude and skills required for every stage.

Stage	Attitude	Skills
Attending	Respect Genuineness Empathy	Preparing for attending Observation Active Listening
Responding	All Above Concreteness Self- Disclosure	Paraphrasing Responding to comment Responding to meaning Responding to feeling Questioning
Personalizing	All Above Confrontation Immediacy	Building an interchangeable base Personalizing meaning Personalizing problems Personalizing goals Personalizing feelings Decision making
Initiating	All Above	Defining goals Delineating action programs Creating time schedules Establishing reinforcements Preparing to implement action steps
Evaluating	All Above	Motivating Analyzing

Attending: Involving the Client

The counselor should facilitate the environment of the interviewing space in such a way that when the client enters, he/she should feel safe and comfortable. 

While meeting the client the counselor should formally greet the client, the first impression matters a lot, specifically the way the counselor interact with the client, the counselors body language, the grip of the handshake, the handshake, addressing the client with their name, shows the respect to the client, that the counselor is genuine and reliable.

The counselor should establish the administrative and psychological contract with the client, in which the purpose of the contact: the terms and conditions of the interaction are clearly mentioned, so that both client and counselor are clear what to expect and boundaries of the interaction. The decision should be made after asking the client about their expectations and explain the client about what the both counselor and client could achieve from the process. The main responsibility of the counselor is to mentally prepare and encourage the client to be fully involved in the counseling process.

The counselor should use non-verbal skills while attending the client; the counselor should sit facing the client squarely, should lean towards the client to show the interest, make eye contact with the client instead of looking here and there and writing all the time; so that the client knows that they are listening whatever the client is saying.

The counselor can accurately infer or guess the client’s feelings and reading to receive help; by observing client’s appearance, body posture, facial expression, and the body movements. Every single minute movement of the client can be observed by the counselor with good efforts. The counselor is able to identify the discrepancies and incongruence between the client’s behavior and the appearance of the client to respond back effectively.

The counselor needs to have patience to listen actively to the information provided by the client. By listening to the client, the counselor is able to understand the tone of client’s voice to understand the client’s feelings and mood. 

The counselor should try to observe and listen to the client without feeling offended or judging the client for their actions and jumping to the conclusions without understanding the context in which the client is speaking.

All these skills are necessary for the counselor for attending the client, understanding and responding to the client effectively.

Responding: Facilitating Exploring

After the attending the client it is very important for the counselor to respond to the client. Paraphrasing the client’s content leads the counselor to understand the feeling and intensity behind the information shared by the client. By paraphrasing the counselor is able to understand the meaning and feelings behind the particular experience of the client.

Responding to meaning involves putting clients’ content and feeling together by creating an empathic response to both clients’ feelings and the reason for those feelings. Creating empathic responses helps to facilitate clients’ exploration of how they feel about their issue and why they feel that way. It helps the client to infer their situation logically and to examine their emotions regarding that particular situation.

The counselor should respond to the client in a concrete manner instead of giving advices, judging them or feeling sorry for the client. Sometimes, if the counselor has faced the same situation as the client, self- disclosure can be done so as to make the client feel that they are not alone or different in any way. But while doing this the counselor should not sympathize with the client or go into their own issues, if it happens, the sinc between the client and counselor gets ruptured.

Personalizing: Facilitating Understanding

Gradually the client is able to accurately able to understand the client’s feeling regarding the issue and reasons for having those feelings and is able to respond to the client in a leading manner from their own frame of reference.

The counselor adds to the client’s understanding of where they standing regarding their issue and where they want to be, the things they need to achieve. The counselor does this by responding to the client’s feelings and personal implications of the issue to the client. The counselor is able to make the client understand what they feel and what make them feel like that.

The counselor invites the client to relate the present situation of counseling process to the real life situation of the client; so as to make the client aware about their present situation. The client confronts the two different situations to one another to gain proper understanding about their issue.

This confrontation make the client understand about their contribution to the situation, their share of responsibility in the issue. The client is able to understand the emotions about the situation and starts thinking about the situation logically. The client comes to a rough understand of what they need to do. The client become aware of their important living, learning, and working values can help them choose the best course of action regarding the situation.

The client is able to define their problems and to transform their problems into goals.

Initiating: Facilitating Acting

The counselor and client decide the plan of action to solve the problem. They brainstorm for various ideas to solve the issue effectively. They define the goal by delineating who and what is involved, when, where, and why it will be done. The counselor decides the parameter for the observing and measurement of the goal achievement.

The counselor and the client develops an action plan, making step by step procedure to achieve the goal. The reinforcement for the task completion is decided by the counselor depending upon the client’s needs and expectations. The plan is made in such a way that there are no gaps that may prevent the client from accomplishing the goal. The resources are made available to the client to accomplish the task skillfully without any hindrance.

The counselor establishes a starting time and a completion time for each step and the reinforcement is provided after the completion of each step and not until the step is accomplished.

The plan is implemented carefully and after every step, the client assess the progress that they have made and how closer they are to the goal.

Evaluating

The counselor motivates the client to give their level best to achieve the set goals. After completing the goals defined, the results are analyzed by the client, the degree to which they have achieved the designated goal, if they are able to make a significant progress or if they need to look for alternative ways to accomplish the goal more effectively.

If the progress the made is not upto the expectations of the client, they go back to the initiating stage to assess where they need to work on achieve the satisfactory results. The counselor motivates the client about the future opportunities, by encouraging and inviting the client think of alternative ways to achieve the goal more effectively.

References

a)      Burks, H. M., & Stefflre, B. (1979). Theories of counseling. New York: McGraw-Hill.

b)      Carkhuff, R. R. (2010). The art of helping. Amherst, MA: HRD Press.

Types of Psychological Tests

a) Achievement Tests: An achievement test is a standardized test that is designed to measure an individual's level of knowledge in a particular area. For example: American College Test (ACT).

b) Attitude Tests: Attitude test assess an individual’s feelings about an event, person or object. Typical attitude tests are used as Thurston or Likert Scale.

c) Neuropsychological Tests: The neuropsychological test consists of specifically designed tasks used to measure a psychological function known to be linked to a particular brain structure of pathway. For example: Mini Mental Status Examination (MMSE).

d) Personality Tests: Psychological measures of personality are described as either ―rating scale or self-report measures‖ and ―free response measures.

e) Objective Tests: Objective tests have a restricted response format, such as allowing for true or false answers or rating using an ordinal scale. For example: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI).

f) Projective Tests: Projective tests allows for a free type of response. For example Rorschach Inkblot Test.

g) Sexological Tests: The sexological tests examine the various aspects of discomfort, problem or dysfunction, regardless of whether they are individual or relational ones. For example: SESII – W (Sexual Excitation/Sexual Inhibition Inventory for Women).

h) Aptitude Tests: Aptitude tests are used to measures specific abilities such as mechanical or clerical skills. For example: Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).

i) Interest Test: Interest tests are used to assess a person’s interest and preferences. For example: Strong Interest Inventory Test (SIIT).

j) Direct observation Tests: These type of tests involves the observation of people as they complete activities. For example: Parent- Child Interaction Assessment-II (PCIA)


References:

a) Framingham, J. (2018). Types of Psychological Testing. Psych Central. Retrieved on August 23, 2019, from https://psychcentral.com/lib/types-of-psychological-testing

b) Shishya, & Guru. (2018, January 17). What are the different types of psychological tests? Retrieved from https://www.owlgen.com/question/different-types-psychological-tests

History of Psychological Testing

The history of psychological testing is a fascinating story and has abundant relevance to present-day practices. Early records show that some individuals used assessment methods to evaluate potential personality problems or behaviors. Hathaway (1965) points out that one of the earliest descriptions of using behavioral observation in assessing personality can be found in the Old Testament.

Gideon relied upon observations of his men who trembled with fear to consider them fit for duty. Gideon also observed how soldiers chose to drink water from a stream as a means of selecting effective soldiers for battle. In ancient Rome, Tacitus provided examples in which the appraisal of a person’s personality entered into their leader’s judgments about them. Tacitus points out that Emperor Tiberius evaluated his subordinates in his meetings by often pretending to be hesitant in order to detect what the leading men were thinking.

Psychological testing in its modern form originated little more than one hundred years ago in laboratory studies of sensory discrimination, motor skills, and reaction time. The British genius Francis Galton (1822–1911) invented the first battery of tests. The American psychologist James McKeen Cattell in 1890 proclaimed the modern testing agenda in his classic paper entitled ―Mental Tests and Measurements.‖ Cattell’s conjecture that ―perhaps‖ tests would be useful in ―training, mode of life or indication of disease‖. Alfred Binet public first Modern Intelligence Test in 1905.

Psychological Testing

Psychological testing — also called psychological assessment — is the foundation of how psychologists better understand a person and their behavior. It is a process of problem solving for many professionals — to try and determine the core components of a person’s psychological or mental health problems, personality, IQ, or some other component. It is also a process that helps identifies not just weaknesses of a person, but also their strengths.

It is a field characterized by the use of samples of behavior, most often administered as a series of items in which the individual must give a response in order to assess psychological constructs, such as ability, cognitive and emotional functioning or personality.

Psychological testing measures an individual’s performance at a specific point in time — right now. Psychologists talk about a person’s ―present functioning‖ in terms of their test data. Therefore psychological tests can’t predict future or innate potential.

Psychological testing is the administration of psychological tests, which are designed to be "an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behavior". A psychological test is a standardized measure of a person’s behavior that is used to measure the individual differences that exists among people.

Theories of Career Counseling

Trait and Factor Theory: The trait and factor theory was founded by Frank Parsons, the father of career psychology in which he gave more stress to the traits of the client.

              Parsons’s career counseling model was grounded in simple logic and common sense and relied on the observing and interviewing skills of the counselor. Parsons stated that there are three broad factors in the choice of an occupation: (1) knowledge of self, (2) knowledge of the requirements for success in different occupations, (3) matching these two groups of facts.

               First the traits needs to be assessed and then analyzes can be made that in which career or occupation a person could go. It was the mostly used method during the period of World War I (1890-1919).

              In modern times, this theory stresses more on interpersonal nature of the career and the associated life-style as well as performance required for a particular job and position.

Holland’s theory of Career Choice:  Holland gave 6 personality types on the basis of which a career can be chosen. In our culture, most people are one of six personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. These are also referred to as RIASEC or Holland Codes.

                  People of the same personality type working together create a work environment that fits their type. For example, when Artistic persons are together on a job, they create a work environment that rewards creative thinking and behavior -- an Artistic environment.  There are six basic types of work environments: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. "Work" includes doing things to achieve a purpose, like paid and unpaid jobs, volunteering, sports, or hobbies.

                 People search for environments where they can use their skills and abilities and express their values and attitudes. For example, Investigative types search for Investigative environments; Artistic types look for Artistic environments, and so forth. People who choose to work in an environment similar to their personality type are more likely to be successful and satisfied. For example, Artistic people are more likely to be successful and satisfied if they choose a job that has an Artistic environment, like choosing to be a dance teacher in a dancing school -- an environment "dominated" by Artistic type people where creative abilities and expression are highly valued.

Personality Types

1)      Realistic: These people are skilled, concrete and technical and mechanical. For example: Engineers, Mechanics and Farmers etc.

2)      Investigative: They are scientific, abstract and analytical. For example: Researchers, Computer Programmers and Lab Technicians etc.

3)      Artistic: They are creative, imaginative and aesthetic. For example: Musicians, Dancers, and Painters etc.

4)      Social: They are educational, service oriented and social workers etc. For example: Counselors, Doctors and Teachers etc.

5)      Enterprising: They are persuasive, out-going and verbal. For example: Entrepreneurs, Managers, Sales man etc.

6)      Conventional: They are organized, practical and conforming. For example: Accountant, Clerk.

      According to Holland, a 3-letter code can be given to the client. For example, if the client holds the characteristics of Artistic, Social and Conventional, then the client can be assigned with a 3-letter code i.e. ASC and then analyze that in which one of these the client holds more characteristics.

Developmental Theory: Super gave developmental theory in 1997, stating that one’s career choice is implemented within one’s vocational self-concept. According to this theory, we relate ourselves to what we do. Super gave 5 stages as follows:

Super’s five life and career development stages

Stages	Age	Characteristics
Growth	Birth -14	Development of self-concept, attitudes, needs and general world of work
Exploration	15 - 24	"Trying out" through classes, work hobbies. Tentative choice and skill development
Establishment	25-44	Entry-level skill building and stabilization through work experience
Maintenance	45-64	Continual adjustment process to improve position
Decline	65+	Reduced output, prepare for retirement

Developmental tasks at these different stages

Life Stages	Adolescence 14-24	Early Adulthood 25-44	Early Adulthood 45-65	Late Adulthood 65+
Decline	Giving less time to hobbies	Reducing sports participation	Focusing on essentials	Reducing working hours
Maintenance	Verifying current occupational choice	Making occupational position secure	Holding one's own against competition	Keeping what one enjoys
Establishment	Getting started in a chosen field	Settling down in a suitable position	Developing new skills	Doing things one has wanted to do
Exploration	Learning more about opportunities	Finding desired opportunity	Identifying new tasks to work on	Finding a good retirement place
Growth	Developing a realistic self-concept	Learning to relate to others	Accepting one's own limitations	Developing and valuing non-occupational roles

        Super states that in making a vocational choice individuals are expressing their self-concept, or understanding of self, which evolves over time. People seek career satisfaction through work roles in which they can express themselves and further implement and develop their self-concept.