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.
View ArticleReal World Clinical Social Work - Testimonials
Praise for Dr. Danna Bodenheimer's book, Real World Clinical Social Work: Find Your Voice and Find Your Way.
View ArticleReal 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”...
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleSocial 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!
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleReal 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.
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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.
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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.
View ArticleReal 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...
View ArticleReal 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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