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Real World Clinical Social Work - About the Author, Dr. Danna R. Bodenheimer

Author biography for Dr. Danna Bodenheimer, author of Real World Clinical Social Work: Find Your Voice and Find Your Way.

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Real World Clinical Social Work - Testimonials

Praise for Dr. Danna Bodenheimer's book, Real World Clinical Social Work: Find Your Voice and Find Your Way.

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: The Myth of the Perfect Intervention

I want to address the powerful myth of the “perfect” intervention or the search to say the “perfect” thing. I often hear students and supervisees struggling to figure out what to say or what to “do”...

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Can we ever take our hats off?

We don’t take off our hats when some arbitrary rule says that work is over at 5:00 pm, or a session ends after 45 minutes. It isn’t that we can never take our social work hats off. It is that we do so...

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Social Work Podcast: Becoming a Clinical Social Worker with Dr. Danna...

Jonathan Singer of the Social Work Podcast interviews Dr. Danna Bodenheimer on what it means to be a clinical social worker. A phenomenal conversation between two social workers. A must-listen!

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Joining the Chorus

Our work as clinical social workers is not necessarily to compete with introjects, although we sometimes do. But wrestling matches are often hard fought, losing battles. Instead, our work is to join...

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Alphabet Soup: EMDR, DBT, CBT, TF-CBT,...

I think that there are some powerful and unifying themes that we ought to be adhering to and, really, refusing to get distracted from. There are three central things that I am working on doing at all...

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Stinging Stoicism

While I certainly have no affection for wasps, I am so grateful for the one that stung me. It made me realize how deadened I can be in treatment. It made me realize just how easy it is for me to stay...

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The Tyranny of Self Help or the Necessity of Existential Depression

What if we embrace dysfunction and depression? What if we refuse the dangling carrot of the self-help section at Barnes and Noble? What if we don’t try to make our clients feel less pain than they...

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Boundaries versus the Super Ego

Boundaries don’t have to equal withholding silence, and truly showing up is not a transgression. And our superegos need not be our guide. Our clinical frames and professional ethics more than suffice.

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Invisible Bodies

While clinical social work is clearly the meeting of two minds, it is also the meeting of two intricate bodies. And for every single body, there is a mind having a complex experience of that body’s...

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Saying No to Gratitude and Forgiveness

The insidious, universal buy-in about the sheer “goodness” of gratitude & forgiveness feels frighteningly unquestioned & reductive. The ideas of gratitude & forgiveness, while not...

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Self-Care During Resolution Season

The idea of resolutions and why they conflict so much with actual self-care is that they are resolute, clear, black and white. Nothing that we do falls under this heading.

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Twin Traumas

Most of the time, our clients have some sort of trauma histories. But the hard truth is that so do we. Clinical social work calls for the refusal to separate ourselves from our clients in some...

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: The Chicken, the Egg, and the DSM

We know that diagnosis is reductive and doesn’t really honor the complex idiosyncrasy of the human mind. We also know, on some level, that it can be used as a form of social control. But we also know...

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Real World Clinical Social Work Blog: Assessing Through a Kaleidoscope (Part 1)

We often forget that assessment is actually an intervention on its own, if it is done well. Just think about how it feels when someone really asks you how you are doing, how your family is doing, and...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Assessing Through a Kaleidoscope (Part 2)

The more assessment and intervention can be integrated, the more likely we are to create a well attuned intervention strategy based on our clients’ unfolding life stories. We need to be flexible in...

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Real World Clinical Blog: The Anxious Social Work Mind (Part 1)

If there is anything that I have come to learn about how clinical social workers feel, it is that we are an anxious bunch. Part 1 of 2.

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Real World Clinical Blog: The Anxious Social Work Mind (Part 2)

The pervasive and insidious nature of anxiety when practicing clinical work can feel both dispiriting and disconcerting. There are many manifest (or superficial) reasons for us to feel anxious as...

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Real World Clinical Blog: On Social Work Supervision

Supervision ought to be where wisdom is shared, clinical voices are cultivated, and cases are conceptualized. Given this inarguable level of import, let’s talk about what makes supervision good and...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Questions That Deepen

Asking questions that shift, deepen, & create openings is a task that requires premeditation & savvy. Thinking carefully and feeling our way into the simple efficacy of the intervention of...

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Real World Clinical Blog: I Believe in Ghosts

The more I practice clinical social work, the more I believe in ghosts. I don’t mean ghosts in the classic sense. Instead, I mean that our work is haunted, on many levels, by relationships and historic...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Nothing But the Truth

As social workers, we are trained in the art of understanding relativity. We step away from the stance of relativity when our clients are in danger.

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Obscured Paths Toward Wellness

For every client, clearly, treatment goals and paths toward wellness or relief look different. The loftier our clinical goals are, the more likely we are to miss essential strides toward change and...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Childism and Its Implications

The idea behind childism is that there is an unconscious pull to invalidate the psychic lives of children. This invalidation happens in both subtle and highly evident ways.

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Real World Clinical Blog: It's Not You, It's Me

By recognizing what happens when the two of us are together, we give voice to the “thirdness” that arises in our work.

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Real World Clinical Blog: Tenderly Assessing Suicide

Suicide assessment is gut wrenching and soul stirring work. Done well, we are drawn into conversations about the deep wish that many feel for the relief that death would supposedly bring.

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Real World Clinical Blog: Keeping the Clinical in Social Work

To render social work clinical, we listen for more, and think about what is behind the scenes of what is said. Social work is clinical social work. And clinical work, done well, is infused with social...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Troubled Me, Troubled You

It is okay to be distracted, tired, angry, anxious. It is not okay to work when you are hungry and debilitatingly exhausted.

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Real World Clinical Blog: Negotiating Salary, Negotiating Worth

Salary is a social work issue. Many students and rising graduates ask me what is a fair salary to expect. This is the wrong question. The first question we need to ask ourselves is: how much do we need...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Congratulations New Social Work Grads and Welcome!

New social work graduates, your freshness will infuse essential energy into the minds of your clients and your agencies alike. We are lucky to have you!

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Real World Clinical Blog: The Health of Trans People

As many of us, as social workers, look toward becoming supportive allies of the trans community, we need to truly interrogate what it means to be an ally.

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Real World Clinical Blog: The Mental Health of Trans People

Successful work with trans people requires a deft awareness of several issues. We must remain aware of our power when working with the trans population. We must also remain aware of the idiosyncratic...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Art as Self-Care, The Art of Self-Care

I don’t know if I am a good photographer or not. I don’t actually care. That is an incredible feeling for me. Self-care should allow us to engage with parts of ourselves in an unpressured, unhurried,...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Poverty as Trauma, Social Work as Cure

In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared poverty the single most pressing, chronic health issue for children in the U.S. Recent research shows poverty is likely the largest determinant of...

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On Orlando and Beyond

There isn’t much for me to say about Orlando that hasn’t already been said. That said, it seems irresponsible and avoidant to write about anything else this week.

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Real World Clinical Blog: Deciphering Trauma

One week after the mass shooting in Orlando, we are faced with the difficult work of managing the resulting trauma. Part of this management requires us to delineate between the presentation of trauma...

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The Impostor Syndrome and the Social Worker

Whether it is referred to as a feeling of fraudulence, impostor syndrome, or a false sense of self, it is a psychological state that makes our work difficult, uncomfortable, and dissatisfying.

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Emotional Acres of Land/Black Lives Matter

Clinically, our work comes down to the provision of an emotional acre of land for each client. For clients of color, this requires a more generous invitation into the room. It requires an intentional...

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Real World Clinical Blog: Rethinking Addiction Treatment

Addiction work is truly trauma work. Trauma work requires deep attunement; recognition of developmental capacity and limitations; and steady, vigorous attention to the relationship.

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Real World Clinical Blog: On Childhood Sexual Abuse

To successfully treat children who have been sexually abused, several paradigm shifts are required. This means, primarily, that we need to reconceptualize the possible scope of sexual abuse.

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