Grammar edit

Being a counselor is hard work for me but I do not know of another career that holds an equal depth of meaning. When people are in a good place psychologically, they impact the people around them in positive ways. I feel that people can change the world for the better and am my choice to be in the field of counseling, is my desire to remake the stories of people and put a smile again in their lives. I am confident that have all it takes, endowed with greater knowledge and wisdom, with one slogan “The sky is the limit for our human potential”.

I will discuss some of these in my essay. Everybody has his or weak points in their undertaking. However, I gratefully believe am more resourceful, and contribution that I bring to the field of counseling, ideally they overshadow my liabilities. I thoroughly enjoy working with people. I love to help empower people to become the person they want to be. I feel my areas of strength are; having sincere compassion and empathy for people, having the ability to build a rapport with diverse people of varying socioeconomic backgrounds, being resourceful, being able to recognize and respect different points of view even when I personally believe they may be flawed. Additionally, I believe in having genuine care and concern for others, having a decent amount of self-awareness, having composure when hearing things that can seem shocking and the ability to have calm immediate responses during crisis. I have a deeply held belief that people are the experts on themselves. I have an advocate’s heart and am an optimistic cheerleader. I believe in people’s rights to choose their way and to make their decisions. Freedom of choice includes the freedom to make seemingly bad choices. This freedom is sacred to me which helps me greatly in not being torn about wishing to tell people what to do in my professional life. It is ingrained on a core level for me as I believe this weakens an individual’s power. I love learning and enjoy getting excited with people about their futures. This has served me well during 20 years I worked within drug and alcohol counseling and offender counseling.

I believe licensure as a professional counselor is important. I plan to pursue licensure in Tennessee as both a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor. I have also begun the process of Sandplay Therapist Training. In the immediate future, I plan to work in an agency setting, with primary current interests being, working with youth or adults who are at risk. Considering the main significance of licensure, in particular, it defines the scope of our practice and provides better transparency for our clients.

I was a Certified Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor in Nebraska and continued to work in the field after moving to Tennessee eighteen years ago. Five years ago, I left Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital after working there for eight years. It was great to be with my children full time and focus on their needs. I’m also looking forward to reigniting my professional life. I have missed working with clients and peers for the past five years.

Groups or mental health problems I would find the most challenging as a counselor are; reluctant patients. These are clients who are not willing to open up which could be necessitated by a feeling of guilt and rebellious attitude especially to the young people who have been forced by their parents to seek professional counseling services. This may act as a barrier to the counselor because one is likely to have insufficient information to address particular issues and may not really be at a position to offer effective help to the client. Another group of people that would find challenging is violent clients. These are a group of the client who as the counselor one may have a difficult time when addressing their issues because they may turn to be a confrontational in the situations where they perceive that there is a particular issue that has been overlooked or not well addressed.

Counseling in the organizational may be quite challenging because of the presence of conflicting of values between counseling and organizations values. Similarly, there is a possibility of the values conflicts within employee’s counselors themselves where they struggle with their precise roles and responsibilities. As the counselor, one will have a problem to ask, whether to give priority to the individual clients or organizations as a whole. Counselors are trained to deal with the welfare of the individual and promote their freedom, which may go against the organization established norm and values which are designed to enhance profit making.

I do have biases that I work to remain mindful of. I have innumerable defects, to be certain. My counseling style does not move as naturally when I am working with people that choose to stay in the place of blaming others for their unhappiness and/or their inability to move forward. I recognize this about myself and this awareness has enabled me to be able to work through this countertransference.

I have many challenges and areas that I wish to grow. Limitations in my openness to people that seem bigoted, racist, and/or act out violently toward children. I desire to improve in this area and I continue to explore my triggers. I continue to challenge my closed-mindedness about people who are closed-minded. I struggle finding empathy for people who consistently engage in a learned helplessness style. I am also bad at wanting to overcompensate for individuals that are going through things that seem to be completely unfair. These are a few of the biases and challenges that I will continue to work on.

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