How to Know if You Are Meant to Be a Counselor

Jan 10, 2012 • Contributed past Kelly P. Crossing, LPC, MEd, MS

Equally a companion slice to the 50 Alert Signs of Questionable Therapy commodity, it'due south important to understand there are many signs of adept therapy as well. After all, good therapy has been proven to help people from all walks of life, in thousands of different situations, and in endless ways.

Good therapy is all about helping the person seeking assistance to feel better, to make healthy decisions and set healthy boundaries, to motility from a place of poor emotional health to expert emotional health, to make connections with others, and to replace sadness, anxiety, acrimony, and frustration with happiness, peace, and hopefulness for the futurity.

Because the "Warning Signs" commodity is so focused on the therapist and the behaviors they engage in—or don't engage in—we wanted the "50 Signs of Skillful Therapy" to put the focus on the person in therapy, which is exactly where it belongs.

While the "l Warning Signs of Questionable Therapy" is structured in a listing format, these 50 signs of good therapy are structured along thematic lines.

Themes include:

• Preparation/credentials, experience, and professionalism
• Informed consent and other legal bug
• Communication and client focus
• Empathy and the therapeutic relationship
• Progress

Below is a listing of the l signs of good therapy, placed in club by theme:

Grooming/Credentials, Feel, and Professionalism

Find a Therapist

Most states and other municipalities require that therapists or counselors encounter specific educational activity and training requirements. Though these vary from location to location, all therapists must exist educated, trained, and must follow basic professional codes of ethics and guidelines. The foundation for expert therapy exists when:

1. Your therapist is trained appropriately and meets all local and/or state guidelines for providing therapy.

2. Your counselor seems competent and experienced enough to help you lot with your issues and does not appear overwhelmed by them. While it is possible you may see a advisor who does not accept the training or feel to help you with your problems, they should always let yous know if that is the instance.

3. Your therapist explains the therapeutic process and how y'all can do good from it, without guaranteeing your success or promising that "everything volition be okay." The bottom line is that no one tin can make such guarantees—neither the therapist, nor you lot.

4. Your counselor e'er maintains professional business practices by keeping the focus on you. They gear up ahead of time for your sessions by reviewing notes or action items from previous sessions. They keep your appointments; are more often than not on fourth dimension; and demonstrate they are paying attention past not answering their phone, checking their electronic mail, or otherwise becoming distracted during your sessions.

five. Your therapist provides a diagnosis if necessary but remains steadfastly focused on helping you to manage any such diagnosis and get better. The diagnosis remains the backdrop for therapy, non the focus of information technology.

half dozen. Your counselor understands and communicates to yous that in that location are many effective approaches to therapy, and no i approach tin meet the needs of every client. They model open-mindedness about other approaches to therapy.

vii. Your counselor explains what psychotherapeutic technique they plan to use, welcomes and answers any questions you may have about a specific technique, and requests your comments for any technique that may be new or different for you.

eight. Your counselor is active in the therapy community and regularly interacts with other professionals. Information technology is this regular collaboration with other professionals that keeps your therapist current and able to provide the best therapy for y'all.

9. Your counselor provides insight and knowledge that you otherwise might not have seen. This insight clearly comes from experience and training.

10. Your therapist maintains a good balance between your thoughts and your feelings without neglecting or diminishing either 1.

eleven. Your counselor always demonstrates a balanced and appropriate level of emotion during sessions. Because good counselors are empathic and genuinely intendance for their clients, sometimes they express emotion when learning about a client's experience. For case, if the client has experienced the loss of a loved one, the counselor may show sadness. While some emotion is advisable, an abundance of emotion is generally not okay. Adept therapists maintain their focus on yous and non their ain emotions.

12. Your therapist helps you to work through highly vulnerable feelings or memories in a rubber and therapeutic manner that does not re-traumatize y'all. Because of your work together, they know when information technology is safe to deal with these feelings or memories and when it is not. They neither push button yous to "go at that place" nor exercise they forestall y'all from "going there."

13. Your counselor has as well experienced being in therapy. Many counselors choose this field because they've had positive therapy experiences themselves, and they want to do the aforementioned for others. For those who have not experienced therapy prior to entering a advisor education plan, near curricula require counseling students to participate in therapy, even if briefly so. This allows therapists to understand therapy from the client's perspective.

Informed Consent and Other Legal Issues

The term informed consent is common amongst therapists. It simply means that the client should be fabricated aware of whatsoever and all benefits and risks of therapy or a item treatment or technique and so that he or she may make the best conclusion virtually proceeding with the therapy. Informed consent is often a legal requirement likewise, and these next few signs of practiced therapy are specifically about informed consent and other legal issues. The foundation for good therapy exists when:

14. Yous receive a packet, unremarkably called intake forms or informed consent, to complete before or with your get-go date. This bundle should explain how therapy with your counselor works, what your rights are as a client, the fee schedule, insurance information, privacy information, and more. Your therapist should also respond whatever questions about this parcel to your full satisfaction.

15. Your counselor explains to yous that therapy is e'er your choice. They should make you feel comfortable with the choice to discontinue therapy or to choose some other therapist. Some people decide to get out therapy before the counselor thinks it is healthy to do so, and your therapist is obligated to express any concern if you lot opt to discontinue therapy before the therapy has been "completed." Yet, this business organization should not make you lot experience as if y'all don't have the choice to get out.

xvi. Your advisor maintains your confidentiality at all times. While there are some occasions when information technology's necessary for a advisor to break confidentiality, these are typically outlined very advisedly in the state's or other municipality's legal and upstanding guidelines for counselors. Though the guidelines vary depending on where yous live, generally speaking, a counselor tin can divulge the contents of a therapy session or sessions if the client or another person appears to be in imminent danger, or if the court requires data for a legal proceeding. Y'all may desire to check your own local and state guidelines.

17. Your advisor maintains the confidentiality of other clients besides. While your advisor may tell yous anecdotal stories of other people'due south experiences with counseling if at that place is a therapeutic value to you, they should never reveal the identities of other clients or requite you whatsoever information that would allow you to identify them.

18. Your therapist responds openly and honestly to any questions y'all may have most complaints filed with the licensing board. We recommend that you lot ever check with the licensing board to make sure your therapist's license is current and that at that place are no unresolved issues.

Communication and Customer Focus

Effective advice and the human relationship between you and your advisor are probably the most important and indicative factors in whether or not your therapy will exist successful. While everyone has different communication styles, it is the counselor's part to be clear throughout the counseling process. A key part of effective communication is the focus of the advisor—which should always be on you. The foundation for good therapy exists when:

19. Your counselor explains right upward front how they tin assist you. They give you concrete examples of what they volition do, what you will need to practice, and how you volition know the therapy is progressing.

20. Your counselor regularly checks your progress confronting your goals and helps you to understand where you are and where you may still need to get.

21. Yous feel a connection with your counselor that shows they actually believe in yous and in the goals you have fix for your life.

22. Conversations with your counselor seem natural and balanced. They neither talk too much nor too little. They use terms and language you understand and explain whatsoever concepts that may be difficult or disruptive.

23. Your counselor helps y'all to see your own function in your level of happiness and recognizes that, while some people in your life may influence you negatively, arraign is a subversive force and cannot be part of salubrious choices.

24. Your therapist balances the 24-hour interval-to-twenty-four hour period needs of managing your symptoms using effective coping skills with the need to work through and resolve the underlying root causes of those symptoms. By focusing on both, they are better able to help you progress and movement frontwards than by putting all therapeutic attention on ane or the other.

25. Your counselor models the behavior they are trying to assist you with. They are thoughtful with comments and responses. They remain calm and speak at a moderate volume and are not antagonistic or aggressive with you.

26. It is clear that your therapist's sole purpose is to help you lot—without focusing on coming together their ain needs, talking excessively about themselves, disclosing personal data that does not hold some therapeutic value for yous, or enlisting your aid with annihilation that is outside the purpose of helping y'all.

27. Your advisor recognizes they may not have all of the answers or be able to help y'all in some circumstances. They freely acknowledge whatever mistakes, welcome your honest feedback, and utilise these every bit learning experiences in club to ameliorate help you and understand your needs in the time to come.

Empathy and the Therapeutic Relationship

Empathy, or being able to "put yourself in somebody else'south shoes," is a hallmark of good therapy. And therapists are often naturally empathic, as this is one of the mutual reasons they choose to be therapists in the first place. Demonstrating empathy inside the therapeutic setting helps the client to experience condom, to feel understood, and ultimately to feel similar they can make progress.

Empathy is what helps build a relationship with your therapist. And your relationship with the therapist is fundamental to the success of therapy itself. Without a strong human relationship, the therapist has footling take chances of genuinely helping the client work through difficulties, and the client has an every bit low run a risk of progressing.

A number of the alert signs refer to a "dual relationship," which is quite just i where the client knows the counselor in some other context or setting also the counseling environment. This secondary human relationship can crusade confusion for the client, which is why information technology's typically an ethical issue. Good therapists maintain a productive and professional relationship with you lot at all times. While the human relationship with your therapist can seem quite shut—afterward all, you are sharing your near private thoughts, sometimes over long periods of time—therapists are trained to manage this closeness and non cantankerous the upstanding line of becoming friends or romantic partners. The foundation for proficient therapy exists when:

28. Your counselor maintains a professional relationship with you at all times.Their demeanor could exist friendly, but they never depict your relationship as a friendship.

29. Your therapist treats you lot as a "whole person," an equal who is not defined by your bug, and does non brand negative judgments almost you. You lot feel 18-carat care and business organisation from your therapist. Ane of the hallmarks of good therapy is known every bit unconditional positive regard. This is an thought that is taught in counseling programs across the country; it maintains that the therapist should see clients in a positive light regardless of whatsoever behavior, lifestyle, or other problems.

30. Your therapist is respectful of your values and belief systems and does not exhibit an agenda founded on personal values or conventionalities systems. They are sensitive to your culture and religion and utilize aspects of these as part of your therapy, when appropriate. If they lack noesis about your behavior, they inquire questions in a respectful manner to gain amend insight.

31. Your therapist knows you well plenty to understand whatsoever physical boundary bug you lot may have and does non "move into your infinite" or touch you lot without asking if it's okay with you.

32. Your counselor empathizes with you lot at an appropriate level, such as a natural or fitting response or level of emotion to your life'southward experiences, and not one that is either overdone or exaggerated, or flat and near nonexistent.

Progress

Finally, your progress in therapy is the ultimate indicator of whether or not you are receiving good therapy. After all, regardless of how competent or skilled your therapist may be, you getting better is what actually counts. Earlier we go into the final listing, it is of import to note that merely because someone is non making progress doesn't mean the therapist is bad or incompetent. Therapy by its very nature is highly subjective and influenced by the varying needs, readiness, and styles of both the client and the therapist. Sometimes a client may not exist ready for therapy and sometimes the therapist and the client are non a adept fit.

With regard to the changes listed beneath, it should be mentioned that they don't usually happen all at once; instead, they oftentimes happen gradually and in unlike sequences. The foundation for proficient therapy exists when:

33. You feel better! You notice that yous are happier, calmer, at ease more than often, and more than hopeful about the hereafter.

34. You are resolving your own issues and not looking to your therapist or anyone else to fix things for you. A skillful therapist guides you to your ain all-time solutions. They are not "rescuers" who are there to save y'all from the problems y'all are facing. Instead they assistance you lot achieve insight into your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences so that you can make the right choices for yourself and move toward a healthier emotional state.

35. You handle life'southward ups and downs more than easily and with more command over your emotions. You see the difficult times as part of life and are less likely to become overwhelmed by them.

36. You are more than forgiving and accepting. You lot are seeing those around you lot, including those who may take hurt yous, as humans who may have just fabricated mistakes just as you lot have.

37. Yous are more connected to yourself and your own emotions, to those around y'all, and to life in general. Yous look forrard to living your life and not only moving through it.

38. You are beginning to encounter things differently. Your perspective on life and everything around you is changing, and you lot meet solutions where y'all may have seen problems in the past.

39. You lot are making unlike choices and looking at your ain needs more than ofttimes. You recognize that you have choices y'all didn't used to retrieve you had.

xl. You smile or express mirth more; your whole demeanor is more positive and future-focused.

41. Other people are noticing differences in you lot, and they are beginning to react to you in dissimilar and more positive ways.

42. You lot are getting forth better with the other people in your life—from your friends and family members, to your coworkers, to strangers you lot come across on a day-to-24-hour interval basis.

43. You take more hope for a brighter futurity for yourself and for your loved ones.

44. You lot have some sort of program or goal for what y'all desire your life to be, and you're working towards that goal.

45. Y'all are setting healthy boundaries with the people in your life and actually edifice stronger relationships considering of it.

46. Yous detect that you're feeling meliorate outside of the therapeutic setting and non just while you're talking to your therapist.

47. Yous feel safe both emotionally and physically.

48. Yous feel important, competent, and significant in the lives of those around y'all. You know you take value to them and to yourself.

49. You experience stronger and better able to express your own needs and desires. You don't feel victimized past the actions of others.

l. You are making your ain healthier choices for your beliefs, for your thoughts, and for your feelings.

© Copyright 2012 GoodTherapy.org. All rights reserved. Permission to publish granted past Kelly P. Crossing, LPC, MEd, MS

The preceding article was solely written by the author named above. Any views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the preceding article tin be directed to the author or posted as a comment below.

sweetwartind.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/50-signs-good-therapy-0110119/

Share this post