About six months ago (but who’s counting?), I published a blog post with the same title as this one. At the risk of somehow spreading the chaos in today’s news, I want to quote how chaos came up in my group therapy presentation yesterday. This happened in the question and answer period after I described how my open-access groups work in a primary care practice in a renowned teaching hospital in Boston.
Audience member: Ann, I am assuming you are comfortable with chaos. How do you deal with it in your groups, which people can attend as they choose?
Me: When you give people access to the behavioral health care they need, there is less chaos than you might expect.
I actually do not experience chaos in my therapy groups, but I do experience more of it, these days, in the world outside my groups. As I said in my presentation yesterday, I believe people need the support of therapy groups even more in today’s chaotic world.
Yesterday was Halloween in these parts, so I saw many people and things disguised, throughout the day and evening.
Actually, the evening before, at a therapy group, somebody responded to the mindfulness exercise — looking at a fallen leaf — by saying this:
I noticed that the leaf had two sides. One was shiny — like the face we present to people. The other side was duller and dirtier.
There are at least two sides — and disguises — to everything, aren’t there?
I shall not disguise my eagerness to share some photos I took yesterday, starting with some that show, undisguised, a challenging side of commuting in Boston:
Yes, major and familiar routes can suddenly close down while you’re trying to get to work on time, with disguised, incomplete, and confusing signals.
After I parked my car near Fenway Park (and feel free to disguise the sound of those last eight words with a Boston accent*), I saw this on my walk to work:
Eeeek! A mouse!
After I got to work, I saw these people, disguised:
Jan (disguised as a witch) offered me a couple of disguises, too:
I appreciated the choice of being a dog or a cat person. Here’s Jan, undisguised
… telling me all sorts of interesting things, including how:
she scared a patient on a previous Halloween when she responded to a distress call forgetting about the frightening disguise she was wearing,
fellow undisguised blogger (and Serial Syracusian) Mark Bialczak sounds very familiar to her, and
she worked — before she came to the hospital where we both work now (whose name I disguise in my blog) — at Boston Children’s Hospital, starting (as my luck would have it) one year AFTER my 27 years there as a patient. (For posts about my disguise as Congenital Cardiac Condition Girl, start here.)
When Jan and I were talking about such things, I didn’t disguise any of my feelings, including how I feel about Jan (who has appeared in previous posts, including here).
Speaking of undisguised, here’s Jackie (who has also appeared previously in this blog, including here and here).
Jackie told me she decided spontaneously, before coming to work, not to put on all the make-up required to be Cruella Deville.
I think Jackie, with or without makeup, always comes through, undisguised.
I’m wondering, now, why I’m writing so much about “undisguised,” considering the title of today’s post. I hope you don’t disguise any ideas you might have about that or anything else. (In case I’m disguising my intentions here: I’m asking you to leave a comment.)
Here’s more “disguised” from yesterday:
Is there anything else disguised for me, here and now?
Well, I won’t disguise my love for this Who song — with a title that was disguised from me for a long time, because I couldn’t understand what Pete Townsend was singing — which I might be hearing at an 80’s Dance party tonight:
There’s just one more thing I don’t want to disguise, before I end this post and work on my disguise for tonight’s party. Yesterday, I got an email from an attendee of my Sold Out presentation about the therapy groups I do. She did not disguise her enthusiasm about the work I’m doing, as evidenced by this blog post she’s writing about it:
Can patients of a large primary care practice have immediate, regular, and frequent access to behavioral health care? The answer, according to Ann Koplow, LICSW, is a resounding yes. Ann, a social worker working in a primary care practice located in a major Boston teaching hospital, has developed an open access group therapy program that goes a long way towards removing barriers to mental health treatment.
I shall not disguise my reaction to all this (it’s joy).
Here’s hoping that my gratitude to all who contributed to this post and to those who read my undisguised writings (including you — of course!) is NOT disguised.
