Today is the day of people who don't know what they want.
I've noticed, in the time I've been working as an intake counselor, that no one on earth really understands the insurance system. Add to that the population I work with - in essence, the crazy and those who love them - and you've got to have saintly patience, or at lease be able to fake it.
Some days, this is no great shakes. Others, like today, this is an effort that would do Hercules proud.
Folks call without knowing the names of the doctors they'd like to see. They call not knowing why they want to see their doctors. They call to check their benefits for the 4th time in two days. They call to get phone therapy, and get really upset when they find out they have to *gasp* go see a counselor.
People. . .with all due respect. . .if you're talking to me, YOU HAVE PROBLEMS. Get a rack for all those issues and get some help. Therapy may not be as trendy as it was in the 80's, but it's not exactly the sandwichboard of shame, either.
The reality is, our society has developed in strange ways, and in ways that our yet relatively primitive brains are not hardwired to cope with. No amount of agrarian society could have prepared our genes for the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution. Just as we started thinking we had machinery dealt with, the technological revolution kicked us all in the teeth. We're only human, folks. Why do we expect ourselves to cope seamlessly with a world that innundates us with more information that we could ever absorb? What makes us average Joes so special? We are required to suck up more and more tragedy, comedy, and drudgery every day of our allotted threescore and ten. A hundred years ago, most folks never traveled more than 20 miles from home. Your whole world was within that radius. You seldom heard much about the Great Outside unless it really meant something to you. Nowadays, every person on the planet is only a jack away from anywhere he wants to go. How can the mind be expected to evolve to that level in so little time? With the massive improvements have come massive conflicts. They're not avoidable. Most of us did not have someone to teach us how to concretely deal with everything we'd ever experience.
On top of all these new challenges, we still have the old challenges to cope with. Family, friends, teachers, academics, work, Dieties of Choice, developing ourselves into relatively decent human beings while still trying to be, in some way, cool. We live in a society that simultaneously tells us we are wonderful and that we can never, ever attain the level of cool that everyone else did - unless we buy Coke and Bud and Prada and whatever else is available for purchase. We are all subjected to a set of rules to live by that somehow manages to change, radically, every ten years or so. Just when you get good at being a kid, puberty strikes. No one ever masters that - but we are finally lifted from that state into adolescence. What a wonderful place to be - your emotions are experienced at twice the level of everyone else's, but no one tells you that until you're done being a teenager. Finally, young adulthood, the seething morass of college or work, and the ulitmate understanding that your parents weren't kidding about their bills. Then kids. Then teenage kids. Then, suddenly, you're ready to retire. Then. . .is there a then?
With all this happening, people - with all this input, these rapid transitions, this continual stream of information and choices and confrontations and challenges and things to learn and see and do, how are we supposed to just automatically know how to juggle it all? We're NOT. It's not that scary, folks, to ask for help. It is no great shame, it doesn't make you weak or stupid or too fragile. It makes you, well, one of us. Human.
But when you call your insurance company to get certification, know the name of your doctor.
I've noticed, in the time I've been working as an intake counselor, that no one on earth really understands the insurance system. Add to that the population I work with - in essence, the crazy and those who love them - and you've got to have saintly patience, or at lease be able to fake it.
Some days, this is no great shakes. Others, like today, this is an effort that would do Hercules proud.
Folks call without knowing the names of the doctors they'd like to see. They call not knowing why they want to see their doctors. They call to check their benefits for the 4th time in two days. They call to get phone therapy, and get really upset when they find out they have to *gasp* go see a counselor.
People. . .with all due respect. . .if you're talking to me, YOU HAVE PROBLEMS. Get a rack for all those issues and get some help. Therapy may not be as trendy as it was in the 80's, but it's not exactly the sandwichboard of shame, either.
The reality is, our society has developed in strange ways, and in ways that our yet relatively primitive brains are not hardwired to cope with. No amount of agrarian society could have prepared our genes for the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution. Just as we started thinking we had machinery dealt with, the technological revolution kicked us all in the teeth. We're only human, folks. Why do we expect ourselves to cope seamlessly with a world that innundates us with more information that we could ever absorb? What makes us average Joes so special? We are required to suck up more and more tragedy, comedy, and drudgery every day of our allotted threescore and ten. A hundred years ago, most folks never traveled more than 20 miles from home. Your whole world was within that radius. You seldom heard much about the Great Outside unless it really meant something to you. Nowadays, every person on the planet is only a jack away from anywhere he wants to go. How can the mind be expected to evolve to that level in so little time? With the massive improvements have come massive conflicts. They're not avoidable. Most of us did not have someone to teach us how to concretely deal with everything we'd ever experience.
On top of all these new challenges, we still have the old challenges to cope with. Family, friends, teachers, academics, work, Dieties of Choice, developing ourselves into relatively decent human beings while still trying to be, in some way, cool. We live in a society that simultaneously tells us we are wonderful and that we can never, ever attain the level of cool that everyone else did - unless we buy Coke and Bud and Prada and whatever else is available for purchase. We are all subjected to a set of rules to live by that somehow manages to change, radically, every ten years or so. Just when you get good at being a kid, puberty strikes. No one ever masters that - but we are finally lifted from that state into adolescence. What a wonderful place to be - your emotions are experienced at twice the level of everyone else's, but no one tells you that until you're done being a teenager. Finally, young adulthood, the seething morass of college or work, and the ulitmate understanding that your parents weren't kidding about their bills. Then kids. Then teenage kids. Then, suddenly, you're ready to retire. Then. . .is there a then?
With all this happening, people - with all this input, these rapid transitions, this continual stream of information and choices and confrontations and challenges and things to learn and see and do, how are we supposed to just automatically know how to juggle it all? We're NOT. It's not that scary, folks, to ask for help. It is no great shame, it doesn't make you weak or stupid or too fragile. It makes you, well, one of us. Human.
But when you call your insurance company to get certification, know the name of your doctor.