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Hi, my name is Angie Whitehurst. Hi Angie. And your name is? Carey Gauzens.

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Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. I'd like to ask you a question. Throughout your work life, as we've all worked, is there anything that you valued, that made you happy, that made you proud? It could be a moment or something you do, that you could share with us? Sure, Yeah, I work as a pastoral counselor. So I'm a psychotherapist. And probably my favorite working moment is that I can shift my own hours and set them. So one day a week, for a while there, I was seeing clients in the evening and going to serve our food pantry at church in the morning and that just made for a really balanced day, but I got see all kinds of different people and be of service and that was important to me.

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That's awesome. Thank you. It was pretty awesome. How long have you been doing pastoral counseling? Oh my gosh. Almost 30 years.

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What compelled you to go into that? So I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I wanted to be able to do counseling with people, but I wanted to be able to do it for an affordable fee and the center where I work is nondenominational and we don't push any agenda on anyone, but we do sliding fee scale counseling and we're trained in such a way that if somebody wants to talk about their beliefs, how their worldview, how their spirituality affects their healing, then I'm able to do that. Did you have to get special training for that or is that an innate gift that you have? Aw, what a great question. I did some special training. I've done a lot of spirituality stuff. I work with my church. So I felt called to be able to talk about the pastoral with people and then I got my counseling training through the social work program at Catholic University.

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Awesome. and have you interacted with or seen people whose lives have become active after they've visited with you? Yeah, it's a yeah, it's a huge blessing. Yeah. Yeah. So many people over 30 years as social worker. Lots of people. What would you recommend people do who are working and are interacting with people that work or are in society, is there anything you think people should talk about or think about? I do, I think sort of remembering that everybody's under stress right now and we're all doing the best we can and sort of imputing the best possible motives to people. I think sometimes the somebody angers us or they stress us across us with make. They were out to get me or they did that on purpose. And, you know, to realize that most of us really are out there trying to do the best we can and if somebody crosses you probably there's some reason for it, even if it wasn't okay.

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Can I ask you another question? Of Course! Yes. Are you seeing that people are, because they're at home because of COVID and that's restricted their movement and financials, have you seen more, I don't want to call it domestic violence but more turmoils, family stress, friends stress? Yes, Absolutely. Absolutely. I see individuals, so, I really hear about it from each individual what their situation is, but my friends and colleagues at our Counseling Center, do a lot of marriage and family work, and they've said that marriage counseling has gotten much harder just because people are on edge and, you know, if they're quarantining or they're working from home, there's just not as much space as there used to be.

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What advice would you give to people who are in that situation? Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Creating sometime or some space, that's your own. Maybe being able to talk with your partner or your family about times that they get to go out and you get to stay home, or you get to go out and they get to stay home, so that everybody isn't on top of each other all the time. I think we all take that for granted, don't we? We do and usually we're able to get out enough, that it's not such a big deal but I have a couple of friends, it's not professional, just friends. I have a couple of friends who are newly, married during the pandemic and they're like, I'm gonna kill that person. I love them. It's my first week of marriage, but I want to kill them because I'm never away from so.

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Do you think as human beings have a need to roam and be out and not at home for a period of time? Yes! And we all need our space right? No matter how much you love somebody and how much you enjoy being with them. I think we take for granted the little moments we get on our commute or sitting at home before our spouse gets home or whatever else. They're just little moments for ourselves that are lost right now in the pandemic, a lot of them. So I think we need to build them in intentional. Do you think this is a reflection of American culture or do you think this is happening all of the globe since this pandemic? Wow. I bet it's happening all over the globe, you know, I'm much more aware of what's going on here in America, but I think people are people everywhere and I would imagine that in Europe, Asia and other countries that, you know, people are human. So I imagine they may have a similar thing if their luck is down.

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Thank you so much. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Is there anything else you'd like to add? I'm probably not allowed to do a plug for my nonprofit agency right?

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Yes, you can. Center for pastoral Counseling of Virginia, and people can reach us on the internet at pastoralcounseling.com. And I know people are having a hard time getting into counselors right now, and we have people who have openings and are eager to meet with folks. I need to have that information because we put this information on our archives to share with other people. I would love that.

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And this is not a paid advertisement. No. No, absolutely not. No. I just prevailed on you to ask if I could do it. You do great work! Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you very much, and I really appreciate it.

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Thank you so much. Thanks for asking.