Why I Want to Be a Counselor - Personal Statement
Ever since I was in middle school, I knew I wanted to help others in one way or another. I never knew exactly what I wanted to do until my brother had asked me if I would want to be a counselor. I started to look into what I could possibly do in the counseling field and there are a lot of options. I had to decide if I wanted to be a mental health, substance abuse, guidance and career, marriage and family or an educational counselor. When I reached my senior year in high school, I decided to get help for my depression. I quickly began to realize that depression isn’t anything to be ashamed of and that it is pretty common. That was when I decided I wanted to look into being a Licensed Professional Counselor to help not feel alone, so that is the reason why I chose to write why I want to be a counselor essay.
A Licensed Professional Counselor provides help with mental health and substance abuse. LPC’s can help with diagnoses and treatments for mental and emotional disorders. In Texas, in order to get your counseling license, you must get your master’s or doctorate degree in Counseling. During your studies, 300 hours of supervised clinical experience is required. Also, 100 hours of direct client counseling. Additional requirements for your full license include the completion of 3000 hours of experience. Of the 3000 hours, must be direct client interaction of 1500 hours. On average, licensed professional counselors, in Texas, earn about $50,000 a year.
Luckily for me, my fiancé’s grandma was a Licensed Professional Counselor for 38 years. I got the pleasure to interview her. She worked in counseling for marriages, families, individuals and even groups. I learned about the necessary traits for a counselor, ups and downs of the job, and struggles within the young and middle adult stage.
Mrs. Walter had a lot of traits that she believes a counselor should have when taking this job as a profession. There is not a specific order on how important each trait is. When becoming an LPC you are going to need to be great at active listening. This is important because that is one of the main parts of the job. You are listening to the problems of your clients in hopes of helping them through the problems in their life. Maintaining eye contact helps keep the conversation going and lets the client know you are listening to them.
When working with people who need help you may come across crazy stories, but you will need to be able to maintain good body language and not let the story affect you on the outside. This could be off-putting to the person sharing the story with you which could close them off. You must know how to look past what someone is telling you in hopes of getting to the root of their problem because most times they don’t know themselves. Being respectful is important since you want the client to trust you. So when you are direct, getting to the point in a way that is respectful, they won’t feel attacked. Being direct won’t waste time since, in most cases, you only have a client with you for about an hour, once a week.
Following the Code of Ethics is extremely important in counseling. Not only does it help the counselor decide an appropriate plan for the client, but it is used to protect the dignity and well-being of the clients. In 2014, an updated version of the ACA Code of Ethics was released. A factor added to the codes included technology. Social media has become a huge part of our daily lives and has made it easier to interact with others. You should not friend your clients on any social media, because this crosses the boundary of personal relationships and confidentiality. Mrs. Walter gave me an example of how she would write in her contracts that if she saw you in public and doesn’t talk to you, she isn’t being rude. This is her respecting your confidentiality. If you were to come up to her, that would be okay, but she won’t go up to you.
Every job has difficult and rewarding aspects included in it. A trait you should acquire is not taking things said or done by a client personally. If a client were to stop coming, it may not have been a good fit or good time in their life. When speaking to clients, they will hopefully open up and that may mean difficult things to hear. It puts an emotional load on you to carry. The ACA Code of Ethics talks about not have a personal relationship with a client. This limits the friends you can have. A rewarding part of being a counselor is there is a chance to see someone’s life change for the better and you get to be apart of it. Counseling also puts your life into perspective. You start to realize the minor “problems” you have in your daily life, really aren't as bad as some things others are going through.
Depending on the age group you choose to work with brings different struggles than others. Mrs.Walter worked with young to middle adults. An obstacle the adults struggled with was having poor management skills. Typically her clients had children. This caused not enough time for the parents to come into sessions. For example, if their daughter had gymnastics after school, they may not be able to make their session for that week. The clients often expected an instant fix. They didn’t want to have to work for their change which made the sessions hard to progress. Sometimes the clients wouldn’t do their homework assignments, because they couldn’t find time to complete them. This made the following session difficult since the homework would be the “ice-breaker” for the session. When Mrs. Walter would work with families, they often wanted to choose one member to pin all the blame on. They weren’t open to getting to the actual root of the problem or figuring out a solution to coping with it. They have made up their mind that they weren’t the issue, the other person was.
Reflection
I really enjoyed having the opportunity to interview Mrs. Walter. She is an extremely kind lady with a lot of experience under her belt. I changed my major abruptly and didn’t have a game plan until I talked with Mrs. Walter. I learned about the positives and struggles within this possible practice I wanted to get into. My family has always told me I would make a great counselor because people typically come to me with their problems. They say I am easy to talk to. I once had a girl in high school, that I rarely talked to, tell me something going on in her life and asked for advice. I was taken back a bit since I didn’t know her that well. She told me that I was one of the few people she felt comfortable talking to since she knew I wouldn’t judge her. That was one of the best compliments I have ever been given.
This interview has made me excited to start taking counseling seriously. Mrs. Walter shared funny, sad, and happy stories while we talked. (but continued to remain confidentially) She was honest about the hard parts of the job. She also gave advice that I could possibly use in the future including that I should separate my emotionally heavy clients on different days. She also said to make sure to follow the code of ethics because it could save your job. She had an instance where parents were fighting for custody of their children. If she didn’t write a certain phrase in the evalution she could have lost her job. The phrase was “Mrs. _____ stated that Mr._____…” The words “stated that” saved her job because it was what she had heard from the wife and it had turned out to be false. Mrs. Walter never met the husband so she couldn’t make an evaluation on him, but ordered one to be done. This all would have been different if she said “Mr._____…” claiming the information was true when in court.
To sum up, being a Licensed Professional Counselor will not be easy, but it should be rewarding if you put the time and effort into it.
