School of Counseling Essay Prompt

Mental health disciplines include social work, psychology, counseling (clinical mental health, addictions, career, school, etc.) and coaching. In 1000-1500 words, discuss your decision to enter the counseling profession. Explore why you believe licensure as a professional counselor is important.

#2Finally, consider groups or mental health problems you would find the most challenging as a counselor.

The Essay Prompts: “Discuss your decision to enter the counseling profession.

Explore why you believe licensure as a professional counselor is important.

Finally, consider groups or mental health problems you would find the most challenging as a counselor.” (Add to those two columns)

Name

Counseling Education & Supervision

College

March 27, 2019

My decision to enter the counseling profession is grounded in my belief that there is no greater work that we can do personally or professionally. During high school, I completed my volunteer hours at a domestic violence shelter and after graduation, I took a job at the shelter as a part-time advocate. I began my undergraduate work as an accounting major but it grew increasingly difficult to find the same meaning, satisfaction, and sense of purpose in my accounting studies that I felt working with the women and children at the shelter. After working there for a year I was offered a case-manager position. The love I had for working with the women and children on my caseload was a turning point for me. I felt this was something I was good at, offered great meaning, and was something I looked forward to each day. I decided to change my major to Human Services and made plans for a future career in counseling.

Working in the field of counseling I have opportunities that are diverse, flexible, and foster my growth-mindset. I believe that humans are intrinsically good and that we come here with the desire and the ability to make ourselves and the world a better place. I also believe that many times, we act out in ways that are driven by our personal unconscious patterns. When these behaviors do not work in our best interest, we have the ability to change and recreate desired patterns of behavior for ourselves. I have successfully changed personal habits by utilizing short term goal setting, cognitive behavioral methods and positive reinforcement strategies. My personal world view changed when I understood my attachment style. I have witnessed transformative and profound change in clients who utilized therapeutic modalities and interventions such as EMDR, IFS and sandplay. I believe these approaches are exceptional choices to help ignite new behavior patterns when an individual is to open to change. long-term interventions, more of a psychodynamic nature, are meaningful when deeper, emotional change is the individual’s goal. Research in the field of counseling

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 well people can change the world for the better. The sky is the limit for our human potential.

I will discuss some of these in my essay. Gratefully, I believe I have some strengths that I bring to the field of counseling and 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, 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 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. For the immediate future, I plan to work in an agency setting. Primarily, my current interests are working with at-risk youth or adults.

Licensure helps define 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 you would find the most challenging as a counselor:

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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