The Walking Cure

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The Walking Cure

I remember taking a walk with a fairly new teenage client this winter, trudging aimlessly through the snow.  The walk had been his idea, and I’d had to convince him to wear shoes for it.  Once we got moving, conversation flowed in fits and spurts.  We would talk while we walked, then quiet down to take in some natural splendor, then listen to the crunch of the snow under our boots as we made our little track across the snowy field.  Properly bundled for the cold, it proved to be exceedingly pleasant to stretch our legs while we meandered through a conversation about fantasy novels, school bullies, and the thousand adult decisions required in the proper navigation of middle school life...

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Crossing Boundaries

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Crossing Boundaries

People talk about boundaries quite a lot these days - holding boundaries, crossing boundaries, clarifying boundaries, etc.  And the expectation when you hear a word like boundary is quite punitive - what happens when they get crossed?  A situation that I see often with clients is that one person will be furious that their boundaries have not been respected while the other person doesn’t really understand what is meant by a boundary to begin with, let alone how they disrespected it.  To be sure, the topic of boundaries is a tricky one in any relationship, and is even more difficult to navigate between parents and children...

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Growing Up, Growing Down

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Growing Up, Growing Down

These days, working with teens often means working with them during their return home.  There are a lot of reasons for this: they could be coming back from college or camp, they could be getting back in touch with an estranged parent once custody has been reestablished, or they could be returning home from a sober living house or outdoor program.  Teens being who they are, they often return with a whole new set of values and goals than they had when they left...

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How To Break Out of Jail

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How To Break Out of Jail

As I sit here on president’s day, wondering what to do with myself now that my routine has been all disrupted, I can’t help but think of a previous client of mine.  This was when I was working with inmates, and this client, we’ll call him Jon, was very very much in jail.  He was locked up on extremely serious charges, most of which ended up being dropped, and had spent about a year in jail by the time we met each other.  We went on to work together for just over a year, and towards the end of our time together he was able to negotiate a deal that got him back into the community on probation with no felonies - this is the kind of plea-bargain windfall so rare it starts snitch rumors.  Yet, he chose to serve his probation time in jail...

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I Would Prefer Not To

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I Would Prefer Not To

Probably the best thing I read in high school was a story called Bartleby the Scrivener.  If you haven’t read it, it’s about an adult who gets hired for a fairly menial job and then manages to refuse to do it (or anything else) so charmingly that his whole office tolerates his lack of industry and keeps him on staff.  Eventually, Bartleby’s refusal to do anything leads to his incarceration and death of starvation, despite his former employer bribing the guards to give him extra food.  There’s probably more to it than that, but to my young mind the romance of declining to engage was plenty to chew on...

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