"Crisis Intervention Counseling..." 'Harmony Bentosino'

 Welcome back dakinetalk's good friend 'Harmony'  for another adventure in her life..' Harmony is currently working on her Masters degree in counseling. She is  studying drug abuse counseling. Harmony  resides in Kapolei, Hawaii on the island of Oahu...
Harmony is a true free spirit as seen here swimming with dolphins on the island of Oahu...Harmony blogs about her recent fate...

Crisis Intervention Counseling
Harmony Bentosino


If it is true what they say about bad luck coming in threes, then I have met my quota, and I am safe!

Everything happened in the space of two weeks. One night, I was leaving my class on crisis intervention counseling when I had a crisis of my own. As I skipped down an outdoor stairway on the campus, I didn't see the last step. I slipped, and the pain in my foot and ankle was so excruciating I began screaming first because of the pain and second because I needed help.

My classes are at night, and I had stayed late. That meant no one was around to hear me. I soon realized that yelling was fruitless. I didn't want to stay there until someone found me the next morning.

I managed to hobble to the bus stop to catch my bus home. I asked the driver to drop me off by my driveway. The problem is that the driveway to my townhouse complex is very lengthy, and by the time I arrived home, the pain was so severe that I couldn’t walk AT ALL! It was now midnight. I didn’t want to scream or wake up my neighbors. I also didn’t want to lie in my driveway all night long. I began to crawl along the length of my long driveway. When my knees grew sore, I scooted on my butt. Luckily, I am in good shape, and scooting was not terribly difficult. I pity a frailer person who would have been stuck all night. However, by the time I reached my apartment and literally dragged myself up the stairs, the skin over my tail bone was rubbed raw!

The next morning my boyfriend drove me to the urgent care clinic. He had offered to come get me the night before while I waited for the bus. However, he lives on the other side of the island, and I knew the bus would arrive first. It actually came while we were speaking. The next day at the clinic, I learned I had sprained my ankle and broken my foot. They outfitted me with a cast and crutches. With a little practice, I learned to "fly" on the crutches. But if the distance I needed to walk in my home was short, I would hop on one foot, and that grew tiring.

Two days after this accident, I heard my neighbor screaming outside. I ran out forgetting to grab my crutches (although later my foot didn’t seem any worse for the wear). She had been walking her dog, and a big dog was attacking her little dog. The ferocious dog knocked her over and jumped on top of her as she tried to protect her little dog. Luckily another neighbor pulled the fierce dog off her little one. The tiny terrier, Tony, was a bloody, gory mess. The savage dog had bitten his ear off (among other things). I suddenly found myself doing crisis intervention because the woman walking the dog and her daughter had become hysterical. In my efforts to comfort the woman, her daughter, and the badly injured dog, I got too close, and the little guy bit me because he was so frightened.

"We don’t have money for a vet, and we have maxed out our credit!" they wailed. Luckily, the owner of the brutal dog paid for the vet. The bloodthirsty dog had escaped a fenced in yard because his owner forgot to close the gate. We didn’t even know if poor Tony would survive. He stayed at the veterinary hospital for a week. When he came home, he seemed to be doing better than the woman who walked him because she was suffering PTSD. It traumatized us all.

The third crisis also entailed a medical emergency. My boyfriend, who hadn’t felt well for a week, informed me he was at the hospital and needed to have his gall bladder removed. A little while later he called and explained they couldn’t remove his gall bladder because his heart had become unstable. "I could lose him," was the panicked thought that invaded my brain. By the next morning his heart had become stable enough to remove his gall bladder. I rushed to the hospital and was the first one waiting in his room when they wheeled him back from surgery. We soon learned "good riddance" was an appropriate response to his gall bladder because when they opened him up, the doctors discovered his gall bladder had grown gangrenous!

He made a slow recovery. When he first came home, he was too weak to feel like making love. I worried, "What if he never wants to do it again?" Luckily, a week later, things were back to normal in that department although his convalescence in other areas remained slow.

As I said, these three events happened in a span of two weeks. I was still attending my crisis intervention counseling class and found it ironic that I was the one experiencing all these catastrophes. Maybe the class ought to be counseling me! Perhaps, the crises I had encountered weren’t up to the level of suicide, sex assault, or natural disasters which we had covered, but I knew they counted for something! I related to my teacher what had happened and asked if the course could take on a more personal nature. He decided we would divide into pairs and take turns counseling each other. Since the class contained an uneven number of students, one dyad would become a triad. He suggested I join that group because he thought my saga warranted two listeners.

When it was my turn, I explained to my partners we were doing this exercise because I had experienced so many crises. Then, I described what had transpired. One of my classmates was empathetic about the emotions I had experienced, and it felt so soothing. Then, she responded, "Harmony, I remember in the last course we took on the spiritual dimensions of counseling you were doing a presentation on the role coincidence plays in your life! And look at what’s happening now! What do you make of all this?"
I answered, "Maybe, thing happen for a reason, or maybe, they happen by chance. I don’t know. Either way the important thing is what we do about them.

I’m the type of person who reaches out for support when I need it, and I couldn’t let this opportunity pass me by. I’m fortunate to be taking crisis intervention counseling when that’s exactly what I needed!"

Hana Hou, (Encore) Shared from Facebook...