Mental health had always been a taboo topic before it became approachable. While the stigma is still there, it is not as prominent as it used to be. Now more people are willing to give their mental health a chance and discuss it at length. But the missing piece in this grand puzzle is finding a mental health counselor who can facilitate these conversations and make the healing process better.
As a professional counselor, the time and expertise you offer are valuable. You can help your clients make monument movements in the right direction, which can help them evolve. But to do this, you need to work on yourself. Here’s how:
- Get accredited
Mental health counseling is not mundane discussions you have while seated across your client. The dialogue has a bearing on the patient’s health, so you need to know how to navigate through them. This is only possible if you allow yourself the opportunity to get certified and prepare for your role as a counselor. The credit hours you put in, the research work you submit, and the internships you do make you a fine counselor. So when you meet a client, you know how to steer the conversation while making stops on uncharted territory.
It is also wise to acquire higher education credentials. You can also do that by enrolling in a distance learning program. By opting for anonline masters counseling psychology, you give yourself the exposure you need to be a thorough professional. This builds a new foundation, allows them to share details of their life in an organized manner, and helps you identify what is bothering your client.
- Learn to connect with clients
You’ll see many clients throughout the day. Some may have similar problems, while a few will have extremely traumatic stories. But at the same time, similar issues don’t entail that the clients are experiencing it the same way. Each of your patients reacts and responds to their situation uniquely. Some may even struggle to see the abuse and stay in that environment. Therefore it is your job to hear the client’s story, perspective, and feelings and guide them on what is happening.
Counseling is not like a competition. There is no winner or loser, and neither are there right or wrong answers. Your job is to help every client find their individuality, work through the pain and finally help them move out of situations that are causing them distress. It would help if you were flexible enough to encourage your patients to attend all the sessions. Some may try to evade or block you out, but you cannot allow yourself to become angry and rebuke them for it.
- Learn to approach delicate subjects
Counseling gives you a chance to tackle sensitive subjects but has a massive hold on your clients. These can happen at any stage in the patient’s life. They may have experienced abuse and varying degrees of it as a child, in their teens, or after they became adults. Going through a powerful and dehumanizing event can steal a lot from a client. Mental health works the same way. Their pain and trauma keep people from enjoying life to the fullest and instead resorting to the shadows and leaning on the bottle for comfort. You may also have clients who self-harm to stay calm and melt their anxiety.
These extenuating circumstances suggest what the client went through is not easy to discuss. You can’t probe or pry directly, but you need to exercise subtly. Softly push the client toward those issues by briefly touching them, looking at the client’s reaction, and then reattempting a conversation. If a client does talk initially but then stops, you should too and move on to other topics.
- Become effective at communication
Communication is a skill, and you will need it in this profession. When talking to your client, you need to know how to make them comfortable, let them adjust to their environment, and remove their doubts. You can start by making small talk which can be mundane and have no bearing on the actual session. Introducing yourself and your work can also help the client become familiar with your methods.
You cannot treat your patients like projects that you need to fix right away. These people with actual feelings and emotions need to sort through them. So your humanity is best reflected by the way you address your clients. You should mind the clients’ pronouns, adopt a softer body language, adjust your tone, and enunciate what you’re saying slowly and carefully. Don’t ever get judgemental or use harsh words. It is not your job to make clients feel guilty about what happened or pass a critical analysis on their health.
- Keep Reading
Mental health is not like a math equation. Reading and studying it once is not enough to understand all its nuances. There is research work happening at a tremendous level that continues to explore and discuss what mental health is. Specific well-known theories like bipolar disorder are mood swings alone are also debunked and are no longer relevant to the mental health community or even sociological perspectives. But you’ll only know this if you’re willing to read and learn more about mental health. This makes you an asset to your clients and helps you see them in various lights, including symptoms that research papers don’t discuss.
Additionally, you should attend workshops to work with these symptoms and clients who experience severe mental health patterns to understand how to navigate them. Conferences are also put in place where professional counselors such as yourself gather to advance this field and make it more nurturing for clients. A degree alone should never be a trademark of your professionalism. Go beyond conventional learning and immerse yourself in this field to become a blossoming expert. So the next time you get a client, you don’t make generic statements that do little to nothing to help them.
Conclusion
Counseling is a field in psychology and sociology which aims to help clients understand their predicament. Mental health counseling considers all the mental health issues a patient has, whether at birth or due to circumstances, and helps them through it. Since mental health cannot get quantified, you have to use your skills to gauss the severity of the situation. So it helps to have a degree that lets you pick up signs and symptoms early. You should also be delicate about approaching unexplored territory and get better at conversing with them. Don’t forget to facilitate your learning by becoming an active learner and partake in professional endeavors which can help you polish yourself.