Toscana
30 Maggio, 2015
My last day of
presentations at Casa Cares was excellent! All 3 talks were quite helpful,
informative and fun! I also had a great day of personal reflection and a very
helpful discussion with Dr. Michel.
I felt privileged to attend a very clear, concise and entertaining
talk by Dottore Eugenio Bacchini, an Italian counselor and educator. He
explained the differences in the helping professions in Italy, which made it
easier to understand why the Italian government has drawn strict lines between
them. Different education and training
lead helping professionals down very divergent paths. Psychologists are required to learn much more
theory and can call what they offer “therapy”; whereas counselors do not need a
degree in theory, but are educated “on the job”, and therefore counsel on a
more present-focused and pragmatic level.
I asked Dott. Bacchini if counselors in Italy would refer someone with
childhood trauma issues to a psychologist, and he answered, “Yes.” He has done much to promote counseling as a
profession in Italy, and though it took attacks from the psychological
organizations, counseling programs and organizations have started to pull
together as a body of like-minded professionals.
Our second offering was equally compelling and helpful. Amy Kleine, an expatriate who works with
hundreds of Syracuse University study-abroad students in Florence, gave a frank
and disarming talk on her path to her career as a counselor in Italy. Amy’s personal history gave me, and I believe
some others in our group, encouragement to trust ourselves when we know
something isn’t working for us, be it a relationship or a career path. Her stories of helping kids who are very far
from the comforts of home were compelling and helped me to understand on a
deeper level my own desire to work with persons who are seeking to journey
beyond their comfort zone as a way to know and develop themselves on a deeper
level. I have been in a discernment
process over these last few weeks about major life decisions, and Amy’s talk
was extremely helpful for me personally as well as professionally.
Our third presentation on Adventure-Based Counseling was offered
by Emily Shaver and Ashley Myers, two masters candidates at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham. They gave us an
exciting overview of how Adventure-Based Counseling can be effectively and
attunedly incorporated into our work.
After a great Prezi, we went outside and while some of us took notes and
videos, the majority of the group participated in two physically, relationally
and cognitively challenging exercises.
The group dynamics were changing before our eyes, as some of the
participants who had been somewhat reserved up to this point, started to emerge
as leaders when they offered ideas on how to succeed as a group in both
frustratingly challenging activities.
The closeness of the group also intensified during this hour: when it
started, some of the participants did not want to touch others, but by the end,
there was much more physical contact and cooperation between all those
involved. One of the most fun aspects of
these exercises was watching the group, who may have been somewhat afraid to
make mistakes at the beginning, start laughing at themselves and their errors
in judgment and just continue to try to overcome their corporate struggles as
an imperfect, but unified, group. After
the exercises, participants and observers were asked to comment on the
experience, which was a great way for people to process this on a deeper
level. Some meaningful personal thoughts
were discussed in the short processing time, as well as some observations about
dynamics and the need for issues to be addressed to make the exercises more
universally accessible or inviting.
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| GiGi in the Garden |
All of these presentations along with plenty of solitary time in
the garden and group time on the patio made this an extremely important day for
me. I had time to journal, think, and
then discuss my overall experience with Dr. Michel, which helped me process
some of the intense feelings I had not only about the many wonderful experiences I’d had, but also about
the personally challenging issues I had been mulling over throughout my stay in
Italy. To have the leisure to talk with
a very caring, attuned professor in an atmosphere that promotes peace and
openness may have been the icing on the cake for me.
As my last post, I will add that the overall experience of A Counselor’s View of Italy is one that I would highly recommend. The program is quite enriching and diverse! During our stay, we were offered so many wonderfully diverse topics and experiences that I truly got a very deep and rich feel for Tuscany and Italy. The villa was absolutely lovely. My bedroom (and even the bathroom!) had magnificent views of the Tuscan countryside.
The food and wine offered
at Casa Cares is both healthy and delicious, and mealtime could be a time of social
growth and good discussion. Most of the
people I met, from Italy, the U.S., Senegal, Germany and many other beautiful
lands, were kind, open and lovely. The
conversations, experiences and laughs I had with many of the participants and
staff of Casa Cares, as well as with the volunteers and visitors there, were
meaningful and enriching. The concert in the acoustically and visually amazing
chapel offered by Antoinette Krieg on piano and
Julien on saxophone brought tears of gratitude to my eyes, it was such a
gift!!
I hope that many others will be
able to experience a trip to Casa Cares in the future to learn about counseling
in Italy, about Tuscany, about Casa Cares and it’s magical atmosphere, about
other counseling students and professors and mostly about themselves under the
Tuscan sun!
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