From Alumni Relations at the University of Minnesota, Rochester. Welcome to be on the Nest Y Marco Lands, UMR Director of Alumni Development Relationships. Today we hear from 2016 graduate, Emily Jorgensen. Emily sat down with UMR Center for Learning and Innovation faculty member Dr. Rob Dunbar to discuss what led her to UMR discovering a career, mental health and addiction counseling and the importance of not putting yourself in a box. Currently, Emily is a licensed alcohol and drug counselor with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. In addition to receiving her Bachelor's of science at UMR, Emily holds a Master's in Mental Health and addiction Counseling from the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School of Addiction Studies, as well as a Certificate in Organizational Leadership from Oregon State University. Please note that this episode contains discussions of traumatic events including alcoholism, suicide, and death. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, Emily. How's it going? Good. How are you, Dr. Dunbar? I'm doing great. And for those listeners we got on our podcast today, we have alumnus Emily Jorgensen. And Emily is going to just tell us a little bit about herself through the course of conversation. So we've got a bunch. I have several prompts and questions, but I say we stick to them only insofar as we have to. All right. And we just chat away. How does that sound? Sounds good to me. The first prompt is what brought you to UR. Sure. So it's a long story. But to make a long story short, my dad was down at Mayo for some procedures one day. And I was walking around Rochester waiting for him to be done, and walked across and saw my dad is a MTC alumni and wanted me to go there. And it was too big for me personally. And so when I found Omar was like, oh, the Holy Grail of exactly what I wanted, public school, small health science focus, it really just ticked all the boxes for me. So you just walked in and said, sign me up here? Yeah, fantastic. Where did I submit my application? When did you first start? I can't remember who I started in September of 2013. 2013. We were practically 0 G, man. That was yeah, a while ago. So since graduating you graduated you finished in Actually, I finished early, so I actually finished December of 20162 over Achal 2016. So you finished early then? What did you do after that? What are you doing? What did you do three weeks after that? I started grad school at Hazel Betty Ford Graduate School of Addiction Studies. Where is that? Tell us about that. Yeah, That is up in Center City, Minnesota, Wisconsin. Cro Falls area, Middle of nowhere, Biggest treatment center in Minnesota started here. And really the top tier of addiction treatment. Absolutely. And I mean, that evolved for me. It wasn't something I always wanted to do until I was probably ending my junior year, starting my senior year at UMR, Moved up there from Rochester to Center City, and did a year and a half there and got my license as an addiction counselor. Got your license. So it took a year and a half to get your license. And what course? Work activities, training. Do you get there? Yeah. So I did full course load, so usually 45 classes per they call them semesters, but they were all in a row, so there was no summer break. And then I did internship throughout the whole time too. So not only was I in class and doing that more advanced coursework outside of class, but also on the residential treatment units, working with clients, learning the basics of how to be a counselor. So you were doing that the full time while you were taking classes as well? I was, yeah. And how did you well, obviously it worked for you. What did you think of it? Grad school. And I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea, but grad school is almost too easy for me. And I really think that's because Omar was so challenging that I was just in that mindset of this is how we do it and it wasn't as complicated. I guess I think I was just in student mode still. You're saying the rigors of UMR prepared you for graduate school, for your ground program? Absolutely. 100% 100% So all the complaining did when we made you study and work in groups and all that. I know I know who thought, who thought years later. That is fantastic. That's kind of cool. University of Minnesota, Rochester is proud to present Kern Center connects a new lecture series in partnership with Mayo Clinic and the Robert D. And Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Healthcare Delivery. Join us on April 19 at 05:00 P.M. from University Square for the next installment of Kern Center Connects, featuring a discussion on health disparities within native and indigenous communities. Panelists to include Kern Center researchers and UMR students to register visit Zu Backslash Kern Centers. Is there anything specific about the program at UMR that you found very useful? I think that I was one of those kids in high school who didn't really have to study. You know, it all came easy to me, and then UMR was like, gotcha, you have to study now. So I really built those skills at UMR so that by the time I got to grad school, they were second nature. I was used to balancing a lot of things at once, made it a little easier, that all my coursework in grad school was typically about one topic versus like the many different topics you can do at um. But really, I mean, it was learning how to be a student that saved me in grad school, and I learned that at UMR. Okay, well, that's cool. Learning how to be a student was anything about coursework or about the other experiences you had that helped prepare you being a student? I will say public speaking got a lot easier because we had to give presentations during grad school. I learned how to do that at UMR, the symposiums, all of those things, papers for sure. Especially somebody who took heavy psychology classes at UMR. Nature. To me at that point too, which is a lot of what grad school is also, I've never been a strong, thank goodness, not as many tests grad school. But when there were, I felt more confident just because I had gone through Mar, done tests. What did you do for a capstone? In Um, I can't remember. I did a couple of things. I was the first student leader of rock recovery on campus as I was a senior, they were just starting those that fall of 2016, I got to work with two students one on one, really just doing a recovery program. And then I also worked at Nami, Southeast Minnesota in Rochester during my caps as well. And then a bunch of course work Psychology, Abnormal Psych, Social Psych, Health Psych, All of the psychology courses, both at Mar and then the online ones we could take through MTC. I took as many as I possibly could got. So, you've already said he felt pretty prepared, at least from a skills standpoint. He felt pretty prepared for graduate school. Is there any how did you discover your path, like how did you end up doing what you're doing? Sure. Another long story, but I'll try to keep it semi short. In 2015. Yes, 2015, my eldest brother passed away from alcoholism and that had a really big impact on me. It was very unexpected knowing what I know now. Definitely something that was very preventable that sparked the flame a little bit for me as far as addiction goes. Then from there, I actually had my own suicide attempt in the spring of 2016 while at Omar. That kind of led me into the mental health portion of what I do for you. This is really personal. Yes. Yeah. Is that pass passion about it, do you think? Yeah, I definitely do. I didn't choose an easy job. I'll say that I work with people who are really sick every single day. Not only physically sometimes, but psychologically. And that's not as easy as putting a cast on or giving you some antibiotics. Yeah, that is definitely true. Anything in particular, have you found it to be? I'm sure you're finding reward and what you're doing and finding it. Rewarding has also been challenging. Or can you talk a little bit about the balance of rewards and labor and pain? Definitely, I think just like with any job, you're going to have rewards. Right. My biggest one is when I get to see somebody grow through recovery. The program that I am a counselor in, sort of an after care program. So after they've gone through residential, they've gone through all the different levels of care when they're out back in the real world. Back at home, I work with the clients and their family members. I do a little bit of family counseling as well, getting to watch them from the day they leave treatment until I can work with people in an limited amount of time. My longest client right now, I've had for three years, that's the most rewarding part, is watching them grow and figure out a life that's fulfilling, that's purposeful, that's enjoyable without substances or alcohol to talk to the other side. This disease also kills people. And I've had clients I've been actively working with pass away. That is always really hard because you care about them, you know, You become an active part of their life. And I could have a conversation with somebody and then a few days later find out that they're gone. That continues to be the hardest part of this job for me, I can imagine that would be given what we do at UMR through the psych program, and we don't have a lot of clinical opportunities. And that's been one of the struggles for us, is that we've been trying to grow that part of our program. In fact, trying to hire someone now to get down that path. And part of the reason I feel so passionate about that is that in some ways, just like people aggrandize the surgical part of medicine, until you've actually done it, got into it, you don't realize how it's going to affect you personally and how you're going to manage it and deal with it. I think sometimes people take for granted this idea that training is necessary in the mental health area, just like training is necessary for surgery. And you don't know if you're going to be ready to deal with the psycho, personal psychological challenges of that. Until you've gone through that training and learned a little bit about it, I'm glad to hear that you got that in. Well, it sounds like it was an internship or what did you call it while you were at? Yeah, internship. Internship in graduate school. So that was cool, you got it in real time. Was there any point along the way where you're like, wow, this is more than I bargained for. I've had a couple as a student in grad school or even. Let's go back even further to UMR. I worked at name in Rochester. Just because it's not a clinical program does not mean there weren't people who had severe and persistent mental illness. I saw people in active psychosis and that's when their reality is not everyone else's reality in the in the fetal position, crying that somebody is trying to kill them. It's to witness that. I've had to call Child Protective Services on parents, which is so hard to do because being the child of an addict, but also working with these people for a long time, it's hard to almost betray that trust they have. For me to call CPS and keep that kid safe. Definitely, probably on a weekly to monthly basis, have those moments which also makes it exciting. I never know what the day is going to bring You do the same thing day in, day out. Can you had abnormal, you had Social. Did you take inter Us? Did you think that I think that was before you really got into the psych program. Before I stepped in, I didn't have neuropsych. Did you have neuropsych? Well being and resilience. Was that? No, but that sounds awesome. Oh, I would love to show you that. I think you would. Yes, I should show you that. You don't have time on this one, but yeah, sometimes probably off script for this, but largely because of the experiences. We were having a abnormal conversations with students around mental health. We started a class called the Neuropsychology Well Being and Resilience. I think part of the reason I have this reason, it's not an accurate recollection. But I remember you in that class and it's not because you were in that class. I remember you bringing up points and ideas and topics in some of our other classes. Particularly abnormal that echoing what I was hearing a lot of other students saying about mental health on our campus and mental health in college. And this isn't about me. But the reason I'm bringing it up is because that neuropsych, well being and resilience class is about helping people introspect about themselves, learn a little bit about themselves, figure out what their coping mechanisms are. So that when those situations do arise, it's not all new to them. I mean, I'm not going to pretend that this class helps everyone all the time or anything like that. But one of the things we're not we're woefully ill trained to do as human beings is introspect on ourselves and our own behaviors. Why we're making the choices we're making, Why we're making decisions we're making. I think that I think it was abnormal where we were talking about addiction. And it was along those lines that I remember you bringing this up, it was about something along the lines of why would people make these choices or decisions or something like that. And at the time we still don't know. A lot of times we don't know where people end up following the path of addiction or not following the path of addiction, or being able to get out of the path of addiction, stuff like that. It's super awesome that that was really the connection I wanted to make, is that in many ways students like you inspired those things. And it's really refreshing and exciting to see that you guys are going on into those fields. Particularly satisfying that you are finding meaning in that area just from that endeavor. That's yeah, yeah, absolutely. After my attempt, I went through a DBT program at Mayo and DBT Just DBT Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Therapy. Yes. I wanted to make sure that you said that. Yeah, Yeah, it blew my mind. In my opinion, everybody should have that therapy at some point in their life because it's life skills like those, coping skills, things that seem basic common sense. Oh, I know this. Yeah, you do know it. But do you practice it? Bingo? Yeah, that's the tough part, is that the theory to practice is easy to impose and see it in other people. It's a lot more challenging to see it in ourselves, right? So the number of times, one of the funnest fun, I think you may be encountering this with your patients, with your patients is just asking somebody blink. Why did you do that? The number of times you hear people who believe that we have this free will, this will to choose. And they say, I don't know, It's incredible. It's amazing. I don't know, Watch that. Anyway, yeah, that comes up a lot when people relapse. Another, I don't want to say per cool part of my job is they're not in treatment, they have access to substances at this point, they home relapse happens that first call after it happens is that's the main focus. So what happened? So what happened? And I always get a little chuckle from my clients after I asked that and they're like, well, if I knew that it wouldn't have happened. Not necessarily true, but Okay. What happened? Okay. Yeah, I think that's But having people practice that before you, before it gets into those situations, I think it can only be helpful UMR and beyond the nos would like to hear from you. Check out this episodes show notes for how to get in touch and share your UMR journey. Now let's get back to Emily and Dr. Dunbar as they discussed self imposed boxes, building self confidence advice to one's younger self. So when you think back about the breadth of the expect, first of all, we haven't said where are you actually working. Sure. Yeah, it's been a journey. Like I said, when I got my license, I was practicing in Center City at Hazelden. And got offered to take my position that I'm still in now, out to Oregon. I actually moved out to Oregon 2019 and lived there for two years and just moved back to Minnesota. Now I'm in the St. Paul area. Wow. Okay. So how did you like Oregon and why did you come? Beautiful, Stunning. Love it weird that there's not snow on Christmas, but that's okay. I came back I think Covid is the biggest reason I've been working from home since last March. Still working from home with no expected return date. I missed my support system. You talk about what we just talked about. My support system is a huge part in my mental health and well being, being away from them, especially during a pandemic when I can't get out and make new friends and find a support system, was really, really difficult on me to the point where I started developing panic attacks. And so I made the really difficult decision to pick up again and move back again. So I've been here for six months. But you were doing were you on line out in Oregon anyway? Telehealth when Covid hit? Yep. Were you Telehealth before Covid or We were yeah. We were I mean, people if they were in the area of the Hazelton sites that I worked at, they could come in and we could have a session in person. Okay. Wanted to big difference. Right. That's why you had to be there is there was the possibility of being face to face. Covid hit. It was no possibility of being face to face. And we don't know if we're going to get back to it. I'm back in say family, friends, social network, social support. But it wasn't the weather that brought you. I can't say that it was, although it was like 120 degrees in Portland this summer. So I'm glad I wasn't there. It was hot here, but not that hot. So we'll see what happens when winter comes. There you go, Yeah. Are you in a house? Do you have to shovel? I'm in a townhouse. I bought a townhouse shovel for me. That's cheating, so Okay. When you think about the breadth of your experience now, think about everything you've gone through. What would you tell your younger you? Would you say you should listen to Dr. Dunbar, He's right. Or what would you say? Take neuroscience because you'll look back and wonder why you didn't that's ever come up. I like that. This is more figure it out and do the work then so you don't have the backlash now, what I mean when I say that is that I'm doing a lot of my own personal growth. That I would have made my experience even better had I figured that out at the time. But it would be different. I totally get that. That's so hard though, right when we talk about that. Because that personal growth that happens later, I think you're lucky that it's starting now for you, that's fantastic. I don't think it started for me until I hit about 45 like yesterday. Oh, you're so kind. But I think that the trick is to go a step deeper into that. I many ways, once you get older it's obvious. It's like, yeah, I wish I would have grown faster. I wish I would have done this better. Focus more on that. What advice would you give yourself to try to make that actually happen? Stop worrying about other people. Oh, that's a good one. I wasn't a party, I didn't go out to that. But there are many times I can recall where I could have been more social and wasn't was social and maybe not have been, um, worrying about having friends or what. So, and so thought of me rather than just doing me, just being myself. I think it comes with that age and being in a new place and all of that. But it definitely set up a snowball effect that took me a while to get out of worrying. How do we do that for me? Because I see that all the time, I experienced it as well. The insecurities of our particularly freshman, first year, second year in college. And how that can sometimes, I don't want to say this lead to bad decisions or lead to lack of focus on ourselves and being confident in ourselves. And I wish there was a way in my world when we're teaching, it often manifests as, Does anybody have any, anybody know the answer to this? Crickets? Nothing. Right. And I've told students and talked to students, and the reason that they're afraid to answer is not because they're afraid of me telling them they're wrong. It's being afraid of the people in the room hearing me tell them they're wrong. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. I remember that. I remember that 100% So how do we get around that? How do we get people to be more confident early on? This is going to, so I don't want to say bad, but it's going to sound different. It's not about you, that's the biggest thing I've learned. It's not about you, for better, for worse, inherently self centered. And you're probably analyzing what people think about you more than they're actually paying any attention to you. That's right. That's that adolescent egocentrism rearing its ugly head. Right. And I think that somehow we could disconnect people from that and just say, because it's hard. Because by saying it's not about you, we're really trying to get them to find the comfort in themselves, to be secure and confident. They can be more confident in them. What I mean, oddly, by saying it's not about the focus of the world isn't on you, we're allowing them to focus on themselves. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I still struggle with that. I mean, I just turned 27. I have clients who get mad at me or don't want to answer. You don't want to come to session. And I think, what did I do wrong? Am I not a good enough counselor? But it's not about that at all. It's usually the relapsing or they're busy or what have you. They don't know how to express these emotions in a healthy way and communicate because they have been so sick for so long. But even if they're not, you know, with my siblings, I still do that. And we're all in our '20s and '30s, I think it's our natural way of seeing the world and it takes a lot of practice to not be in that mindset. Yeah, I agree. I think it's kind of this twisted fundamental attribution that we're selectively applying. Right? We're saying why are those people, why are they not responding? Well, because something I did, right? It's weird. It's us applying that fundamental attribution to ourselves rather than to someone else, twisted in a way. But it's so interesting though. Yeah. I mean, I've been doing a lot of work on attachment styles and re parenting and all of that and the stuff I wish I would have done 567 years ago, but it's interesting to see all of it connect and come full circle. Yeah, I like to see it. I think it's great. We're doing really cool stuff. I honestly basically, Let's recap. Your advice to your younger self is, don't worry about other people as much and it's not all about you. Yeah, I guess I would say so. I think I spent so much time trying to fit into a box that I thought other people wanted me to be in. And who would have known what my mental health would have looked like if I had paid more attention to myself and less attention to everybody else. So we got a little bit of time, we might as well probe a little bit me at the end of this. What was the box that you saw yourself fitting into the box you think you felt like you had to fit into? Yeah. I went into Mar wanting to be a pharmacist. As I mentioned before, my dad was at Mayo. He had cancer growing up and passed away right before I came to Umar. I knew all of his medications, what they did. When did take him? That was my knee was like I'm going to be a pharmacist. I got to see in organic chemistry and convinced myself I was never going to be a pharmacist. It was like I'm going to explore, right? But for my cohort at the time, it was like if you're not going to be a Dr. what are you doing here? And there was nothing that any staff, faculty, anybody said. It was this unspoken expectation within our group of, if you're not coming here to either do the, um, go to medical school, go to pharmacy school, or do the other track, what are you doing here? Yeah, it's almost, and this is how that I started getting out of that is being somebody who went the psychology route when that wasn't really done at UMR was awesome. It was so empowering. Yeah. Were unique, right? In some ways, like you said, you carved out you a different niche for yourself, right? It was, yeah, I'm not doing that. But I have this whole island over here that you don't understand, understand. That's kind of cool. And I went through a couple other things before I landed on this, when I decided, oh, pharmacy is not for me then I was like, well, maybe I'll do med Lab sciences and I'm too much of a talker for that to be a position for me. It was kind of a journey of figuring out who I am, which kind of leads to that too. Coming out of that box that I thought people were putting me in. It's fascinating. I mean, I think that's core of it. For a lot of the research that I'm doing, I think that the core, um, really is about, in many ways is helping people overcome the idea of those boxes, right? But we also have our own little big box, rather the health sciences, I think just by nature of many of the relationships that we have in the area. The pre med, pre farm OTPT, they're like these nice little nested boxes, and that's the way people are thinking, which may be the right way for them to be, but in other cases, particularly when we want to have the opportunity for growth, like in your case, right? It's how do we get them to think beyond the boxes. And I've got my own ideas. What do you think? I mean, are you asking me to come teach at MRIs? I mean, that would be great, but to come back to R, I love to. But when it comes to getting people to actually get outside the box, right? To start thinking, how do you think that happens? When do you think that happens? For me. I mean, I've always been more science oriented, more health oriented. I was always more interested in that even before I knew I wanted to be a pharmacist. That was my passion and UMR fit that box, right? It checked to that knowing that, okay, this plan trajectory I had for myself isn't going to work out. What am I going to do? My number one goal was to be passionate and be happy with what I was going to do. So that's right there, Hold on. That's what I'm trying to figure out, right? Because we talk about people breaking out of their boxes. But the precipitating event or the catalyzing event oftentimes seems to be the realization that they don't fit in the box they thought they did. It's in some cases it's kind of sad. In some cases it's really profound for students. Chemistry happens to be your example, right? Getting a C and Cam And you're like, well, I'll never be a pharmacist. And then that box now is no longer exists for you, Right? And you have to start looking for other boxes. They could have went both ways. Right. Like I closed that door for myself, but I could've tried to push harder through it if I wanted to. Definitely, yeah. Like we were saying like because on the one hand we say look for the box where you fit. On the other hand we say you don't think you don't fit just because you didn't get a perfect answer on a chem test. You know what I mean? Mm hm. That balance is hard y. I was one of the people who, when we got that course catalog for next semester, I was going through it. I was prepared at my registration time with all of the classes I was going to take. But for me, it was reading through what they were and what was I immediately drawn to? I can't say I was immediately drawn to physics, wasn't my cup of tea, but like abnormal psych I was drawn to that. So this is you thinking less about what other people are saying, you know, about the box. How do you align with what you think other people wants from you and you thinking more about yourself? What is it you want for yourself? Yeah. They weren't going to take the classes for me. Right. Yeah. But I think it was at that point really. And you start it sounds like we started to focus on you, you know, what is it you wanted, what is it you were drawn to? Blah, blah, blah. That came in the last couple of years at Mar, when we had more freedom to choose classes versus taking those generals, which, I mean, I'm glad we took them right away because I didn't know myself freshman year the way I knew myself senior year. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, that's definitely true. So what do you got next? What it the next stage of your professional path, apparently, teaching at UMR? Oh my gosh. I want to be very clear. There was no promise of That's a great question. I get asked that even by my boss now, because we set goals each year and have long term goals. I know it sounds like the idea of teaching appeals to you. Definitely. They hire every once in a while at the grad school. I've thought about that leadership, I' going into that. But I'm also happy in direct client care. So I'm kind of taking it a day at a time at this point. Not to be cliched for what I do one day at a time as a, A, A slogan, but that's right now. I'm happy. Thank you to Emily and Dr. Dunbar for their thoughtful conversation. And thank you for listening to Beyond the Nest Mars Alumni podcast. Beyond the Nest is produced by University of Minnesota Rochester Alumni Relations, and edited by Marshall Saunders with Minnesota Podcasting. Check out this episode's show notes for how to stay in touch and we'll be back next month for another engaging conversation and with the raptor alone.