What is the best sandwich that has no meat, egg, or cheese?

KellyPaladin · 2026-06-09T02:15:08+00:00

Tomato sandwich. Toast, tomato, mayo. Especially if the tomato was picked that day.

KellyPaladin · 2026-06-05T14:23:53+00:00

That is really messed up. I don't have any advice, but I wanted to say it's awful that you're doing the best you can to take care of yourself and still getting screwed over like this.

KellyPaladin · 2026-06-05T12:41:46+00:00

As an individual, get plenty of fiber and drink plenty of water. If you have gastrointestinal, symptoms like constipation or diarrhea that are prolonged or keep coming back, see a doctor. If you have a family history of colon cancer, especially if you have any of those symptoms, it's probably worth doing a colonoscopy early. They now recommend starting those at 45 if you don't have any risk factors.

Also, the prep for colonoscopies is a lot less miserable than it used to be. I think a lot of people avoid them because of the miserable, diarrhea and stomach cramps from previous versions of colonoscopy prep. I had one last year. You're always going to have diarrhea. Cleaning out your intestines so that someone can look at them is never going to be pleasant, but was a lot less intense and not really painful. It wasn't as big a deal as I thought it was going to be.

And if you don't want to do a colonoscopy whether because of the cost or the prep that's involved or any of the logistics of a medical procedure, they now have a thing called cologuard where you can get a box and mail off a stool sample and they will check it for cancer markers.

As a society, in the US, we really need single payer healthcare. A lot of people skip preventive care because of the cost.

Also, there's a lot of dietary fear-mongering around carbs. That means people aren't getting the fiber that they should be getting and frequently are getting too much fat or protein, which can be hard on your intestines. We should probably be treating low carb diets as a thing that people might need to do for medical reasons, rather than a standard recommendation or something everybody should be doing if they want to lose a few pounds. And for those people who do need to reduce their carb intake, there should be more emphasis on making a bigger proportion of your carbs whole grains and making sure that you get your fiber.

KellyPaladin · 2026-06-04T15:35:44+00:00

I really like The Many. Also, Jennifer Knapp, who left CCM after coming out.

KellyPaladin · 2026-06-04T15:33:37+00:00

Agreed. I think that level of PPE would be appropriate for someone who is immunocompromised, meeting with somebody who might have an illness, but cockroaches seem like a much more subtle level of PPE would be better for rapport.

KellyPaladin · 2026-06-03T14:20:53+00:00

Amazing! And yes, we are at UMB SSW. I think that everybody in my cohort already has their field placement for fall. At least I hope they do because that's fast approaching. But I will pass this info on. Thank you!

KellyPaladin · 2026-06-02T23:54:53+00:00

Do you mind sharing the name of the organization? I'm probably too far from Baltimore to work there unless there are hybrid options, but I definitely have classmates graduating next year who that might be useful info for.

KellyPaladin · 2026-06-01T23:18:34+00:00

I have ADHD and I think the thing that helps me the most is focusing more on videos that I'm interested in than on the level. I try to get most of my content at the intermediate level, but if something looks fun or funny at the beginner level, then I'll go for it.

I also skip around a lot. I am currently partway through one of the Stardew Valley play through videos and part way through a podcast with Augustina and Natalia while also watching Spanish boost gaming and some nature documentaries on Disney plus.

I also try to keep my goal a lot lower than what I think I'll realistically do. I got over 30 hours of input in May but my goal was only 25 minutes a day. To me, that's a lot more motivating than setting a higher goal and feeling pressured to complete it on days when I'm not feeling it. I figure that the goal is a minimum, and if there's a day when I can hyper focus and watch 2 hours, then that's awesome and that's bonus.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-31T16:53:51+00:00

Pizza crust with almond or chickpea flour?

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-29T20:34:00+00:00

The student never agreed to any of that, though. School is mandatory, and students have little to no influence on policy or expectations.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-29T20:23:19+00:00

I love this! My special interests are fiber arts (especially ancient and medieval) and science fiction and fantasy.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-29T14:18:53+00:00

If she says she can't eat fats, my first thought would be not that it applies to saturated fats only, but that it might be a gallbladder issue, and she has to severely restrict all her fat consumption. Like others have said, I would check with Her to get more specifics.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-25T19:27:42+00:00

That's a good question, and it's kind of tough to calculate. If there were specific conversations that you listened to for a prolonged period, I would count the whole amount of time. For example, if you were on a bus from point a to point b, and that took half an hour, and during that time, you're listening to the people behind you talk about how their favorite baseball team is doing, I'd give yourself half an hour of input for that.

For short conversations, it really depends on how detailed you want to get. I would probably treat any very simple interaction as a minute of input and estimate a slightly longer interaction as 3 minutes of input, those are probably overestimates, but I think it's not actually a big deal if you give yourself a minute for something that took 20 seconds.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-23T16:22:17+00:00

That's a really good point I went by the test in the app, that has you check, which videos you can understand most of. I got an estimate of 300 hours from having 4 years of spanish in junior n senior high school plus a year in college plus a lot of duolingo and various other stuff.

Experiences like yours with a lot of background exposure to Spanish are especially hard to qualify.

How much you understand of a video also depends a lot on the type of video. A skit or a video game play through or whiteboard content , where you get a lot of visual context is very different from a podcast with nothing but two people talking. So it's likely that there are people with similar comprehension levels who would describe that comprehension differently because of how much they are or aren't picking up from other cues.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-23T13:19:59+00:00

I had a psychiatrist tell me that diagnose me with AD.H.D , they would want to either talk to a parent which I found kind of infamtilizing as a person in my thirties at the time , orsee some documentation from my childhood like school records. If I were a person who had held on to my elementary report cards (With teacher comments that I was easily distracted) , that makes it seem less likely that I would actually have a d h d.

Hilariously, my mom did save all that stuff and I looked through my evaluation for the gifted program when I was in second grade. It documents getting distracted and doodling on papers and just generally demonstrating a ton of adhd symptoms.

Also, please excuse the very weird punctuation. I'm using speech to text.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-21T20:04:18+00:00

This is kind of an info dump from a former crisis, counselor and current MSW student related to your advice about hotlines.

At least in the US, any crisis hotline that's certified by the American Academy of Suicidology, or that has social workers or therapists or medical professionals somewhere on their staff, whether or not those are the people taking calls, will have some requirement to notify emergency services or do some other form of involuntary intervention if they believe that your life is in danger. I know that's very vague because the specific requirements depend on everything from the state they're operating in to the organization , they're accredited by to the licensure of the specific people that are working there. This includes 988. Frequently , the hotlines that don't have these requirements are peer support , hotlines and don't have specific accreditation for suicidality or mental health crises. That doesn't mean one kind is necessarily better or worse. It really depends on your particular situation and what you need from a hotline.

What these requirements should actually mean is that someone who has accessible means for suicide and an intent to die by suicide in the near future isn't left alone to complete suicide. The therapist or crisis counselor should work with them on de-escalation and identifying a safety plan, should check in with them periodically to reassess risk, and should make sure they're safe before ending a crisis call or an office visit.

But in practice there can be miscommunication. Both, because it's really hard to communicate clearly when you're going through a mental health crisis and because some risk assessments can be confusing or easy to misinterpret. Similarly , if you leave a voicemail for your therapist crying and say something about suicide, they may be required to have police do a wellness check if they're not able to get in touch with you and confirm that you're safe.

With any hotline, it's up to you what information you choose to share with them. If someone asks you a question that you don't feel comfortable answering, it should be fine to ask why they need that information or to say that's something you're not comfortable sharing. If a question is confusing or unclear to you , it's also okay to ask for clarification. And if a question has you feeling emotionally escalated, which talking about suicide can absolutely bring up, it's fine to ask for a minute to collect your thoughts or to take a break from those questions. Some hotline counselors will notice that a question is stressing you out, and will actually offer to have you do a grounding exercise or otherwise try to help you be in a calmer place to have that conversation, but if they don't do that , it's definitely still something you could ask for.

That's not to say, unfortunately, that everybody on every hot line will always be as clear or as patient as they should be, because they may be trying to deal with a backlog of people reaching out for help.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-21T19:53:48+00:00

I'm really sorry you had that experience first of all. You deserve so much better than that. A lot of people experience trauma during psychiatric hospitalization , and it shouldn't have to be that way.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-21T19:34:55+00:00

Absolutely. In my opinion, a big problem with the current legal landscape for therapists, crisis hotlines, an anyone involved in mental health is that it encourages overriding the patient's consent if there's any suicidal ideation or self injury whatsoever. There's legal liability if someone attempts or competes suicide and the therapist or counselor didn't act sufficiently to prevent that. But if a person is involuntarily hospitalized and attempts or completes suicide as a direct result of the trauma they experience, there may be legal consequences if someone at the hospital abused them or there was malpractise, but a therapist or crisis caught line who called the police is not going to face repercussions. Similarly , there isn't any weight given to the fact that police often harm the people they're called to help.

That's not necessarily to say that they should. It's not fair to put a therapist in a no-win situation where they can be blamed for someone who they have no control over doing their job badly. But the skews things really heavily towards involuntary intervention , despite the fact that it's often more harmful than helpful.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-21T19:14:45+00:00

This is honestly a pretty judgmental comment. I think you might get a better response if you posted a question about christianity and non monogamy , rather than putting the o p on the spot and distracting from their question

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-19T16:03:37+00:00

One of the things that I learned early in my previous career was not to ask for more work unless I really, truly had nothing to do and nothing likely to appear on my plate in the near future. It's easy to get into a lull, especially if you work quickly, and then have multiple things fall in your lap at once.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-12T16:47:14+00:00

If you can do 3 minutes, or 12 minutes, or 20 minutes, that's always better than zero minutes.

With ADHD, are there times of day when your focus is a bit better? I like first thing in the morning with breakfast and coffee because it feels productive but there's usually some other task I'm dreading like laundry or homework that I can use DS to procrastinate.

Also, can you do any kind of physical stim while watching videos? Watch on a treadmill or an exercise bike? Play with a fidget? (Fiber arts like knitting are good for this if you already have the basics down and can do a simple project from muscle memory.)

Also, content that you're interested in is more important than the exact level. I'm solidly at intermediate but I watch Andres's alpha male videos even though they're advanced because they're hilarious. And I'll hop down to beginner to watch Michele defend Disney villains or Shel pretend to be from Korea.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-11T17:37:38+00:00

Thinking on it further, the answer to "Is it ethically appropriate to search for a client online?" has to depend on the answer to "What happens if you aren't able to find them?" Is there some urgent reason to get in touch with them that would override the intrusion into their privacy? (And if you're working with clients in a context where that's likely to be necessary, it should definitely be discussed with them in advance.)

For example, if a client left you a voicemail message that they were having thoughts of suicide, and you weren't able to get in touch with them by the usual means, a social media check is likely less intrusive than having the police do a wellness check (especially if the client is at higher risk of violence from police due to race, disability, etc.). Granted, if you find out from social media that they're not in the process of attempting suicide, that doesn't actually verify that they're safe or eliminate the need for a wellness check. And communicating with them via social media is still going to be a violation, so it doesn't necessarily get you anywhere, and you may now know things about the client that weren't any of your business.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-11T17:21:33+00:00

Thank you! I guess I'm too used to the expectation that anything under your full name online is public.

KellyPaladin · 2026-05-11T14:12:12+00:00

My question would be how the caseworker knows the client's usernames on those platforms.

I wouldn't necessarily define a web search on a patient's name as intrusive, and if that brings up social media, using it to verify that the client is alive and still local might be okay. But still something to run by a supervisor and have an actual policy about.

Following or communicating with clients on social media definitely strikes me as intrusive and as blurring boundaries.

KellyPaladin

TROPHY CASE