assert their American power. I was ambivalent when I learned about their role in helping Jewish people in the camps because this act threatened my assumptions about the individuals in the military and the overall military. I became more questioning of my assumptions as I learned more about the military as a branch but still held on to the assumption of the military as helping the government maintain American power.
As one could see above, I do not value violence as a tool to maintain superiority over other people. From a young age, I have valued peacefulness, empathy, equality, and a “one-for-all” rather than a “all-for-one” perspective. In my mind, these were not values that the American military expressed. As written above, these values were directly violated by the things I had heard from my father, from what I read about the awful things the military had done, and
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Because I am more knowledgeable and aware about this population, I think that I will not struggle to empathize and be patient while working with this population. At this point, I would like to continue working on understanding the intricacies of the military, learning ways to engage with veterans, and being aware of my body language while I work with those in the veteran population. In addition, I think that my ability to advocate for people who are veterans has increased positively. I was aware that veterans are denied needs by different resources and often do not receive the promised benefits and needs upon returning home. I think that my awareness of this new information combined with my experiences will allow me to be a better counselor and advocate; these influences allow me to attempt to contact all resources a veteran could use but recognize the previous history of the government denying benefits to