My counselor has gone AWOL so I read stuff

Yes my counselor that is great has gone AWOL. It seems she's having some issues being available. Or at least I guess so since she hasn't called me or attended what I thought were our scheduled sessions. After being stood up for two appointments (three weeks ago) and calling her four times I have determined that she is categorically unavailable. This has happened before a couple months ago as well, but last time it happened she was really sick, and everyone gets sick. Still she was sick for almost two months.

So I am going to go again in search of a new counselor. And I know counselors are people. And I still value the resource. I also know "shopping" for a counselor who fits you is important. And in my case that means they are available. So I'll keep "shopping". Kindof a crass analogy I suppose. But counseling is a service like being a doctor or pastor etc. and showing up is a big part of counseling don't you think?

In the mean time I read stuff...

Today I read most of this blog post on Warren Throckmorton's blog. (I still don't know what I think of him but he sure does make me think). This quote was intriguing... It's from his post about the study a Swedish team did on lesbians and pheromones. (Read his entire blog post on this study here)

This study shows that sexual orientation at the extreme (5-6 Kinsey scale) differentiates how the brain responds to a putative pheromone. The response from lesbians is not as clear cut as gay males. Lesbians process estrogen derived pheromones both in the normal olfactory fashion and via the hypothalamus (a link in the sexual response). The participants did not experience any sexual response so it is interesting that these lesbians’ brains registered the pheromones in a different way than did straight women. Lesbians were somewhat like straight men but not exactly like them. The reference is: Berglund, H., Lindstro”m, P., & Savic, I. (2006). Brain response to putative pheromones in lesbian women. Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science, Early Edition (www.pnas.org).

And today at class my professor gave me three really helpful things that I have started reading and I post them here for your reference.

1. A book called "Pastoral Care and Counseling in Sexual Diversity" by H. Newton Malony, MDiv, PhD [Google books preview]
2. An article called "A Christian homosexuality?" by Edward Vacek (I couldn't find the article online.) I already read it and it was pretty good. Very catholic, but still thought provoking.
   
3. An collection of interviews with various clergy produced as a brochure by pflag called "Is Homosexuality a sin" Read it here.