Skills and Characteristics of Mental Health Human Services Workers Essay Example
Skills and Characteristics of Mental Health Human Services Workers
Tamberley G. Nelson
BSHS/471 Mental Health and Crisis Intervention
April 26, 2010
Frank Selvaggio
Skills and Characteristics of Mental Health Human Services Workers
The following chronological narrative is a personal appraisal of the skills and characteristics compulsory to thrive as a human service worker in the mental health field. This self-assessment will offer learning situations and events pertaining to the development of skills and refinement of characteristics each lending to a successful and fulfilling career.
Adolescence
Thinking back, other than the dos and don’ts of discipline, one of the first lessons I learned still with me today is about gossiping. In 5th grade, I spent a weekend with my granddad and Rita, his wife 20 years his junior. My mother both feared and loved her father but never had a good thing to say about his wife; I called her grandma in their home.
During that weekend, as we worked the fields and garden, Rita and I talked (she talked, I asked questions) about my mother in her young teenage years. I was fascinated and charmed by the nostalgia, I knew more about her childhood and felt somehow closer to my mother because of that knowledge.
Two weeks had passed, when one evening during a rare casual conversation with my mother I offhandedly likened my life with hers. I proudly and naively referenced a small detail of the conversation Rita and I had. The look on my mother’s face must have been many emotional reactions all at once. When next she spoke, I recognized anger and incredulity.
She demanded to know where I gotten my information and what else was said. Utterly confused by my mother’s reaction, I tried to convey the spirit of the conversation and that nothing bad was said. This made her even angrier. Without any explanation, I caught a spanking then grounded for a month. I remember feeling as though I betrayed Rita and that she and I would never have
Tamberley G. Nelson
BSHS/471 Mental Health and Crisis Intervention
April 26, 2010
Frank Selvaggio
Skills and Characteristics of Mental Health Human Services Workers
The following chronological narrative is a personal appraisal of the skills and characteristics compulsory to thrive as a human service worker in the mental health field. This self-assessment will offer learning situations and events pertaining to the development of skills and refinement of characteristics each lending to a successful and fulfilling career.
Adolescence
Thinking back, other than the dos and don’ts of discipline, one of the first lessons I learned still with me today is about gossiping. In 5th grade, I spent a weekend with my granddad and Rita, his wife 20 years his junior. My mother both feared and loved her father but never had a good thing to say about his wife; I called her grandma in their home.
During that weekend, as we worked the fields and garden, Rita and I talked (she talked, I asked questions) about my mother in her young teenage years. I was fascinated and charmed by the nostalgia, I knew more about her childhood and felt somehow closer to my mother because of that knowledge.
Two weeks had passed, when one evening during a rare casual conversation with my mother I offhandedly likened my life with hers. I proudly and naively referenced a small detail of the conversation Rita and I had. The look on my mother’s face must have been many emotional reactions all at once. When next she spoke, I recognized anger and incredulity.
She demanded to know where I gotten my information and what else was said. Utterly confused by my mother’s reaction, I tried to convey the spirit of the conversation and that nothing bad was said. This made her even angrier. Without any explanation, I caught a spanking then grounded for a month. I remember feeling as though I betrayed Rita and that she and I would never have