Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists, Essay Example

Professional identity is of great importance to successful practice. How counselors identify themselves as practitioners is of significance for how they practice and how they relate to their patients. The promotion of wellness is the paramount objective, but how this is defined and understood is extremely important, as is how the counselor understands their own role in the entire process. From this, it is clearly of great importance that counselors consider the elements of a professional practice, and the ways in which they need to cultivate and develop their skills in order to maximize their efficacy.

The promotion of wellness is foundational to the philosophies of the counseling profession. As attested by Myers and Sweeney (2008), this is the imperative towards which counselors strive, an imperative they seek to meet by means of a variety of interventions (p. 482). Now concerning these interventions, they are classed into orders of developmental, preventive, and wellness-enhancing interventions, according to their particular functions in clinical practice (p. 482). Great strides have been made in the mapping and description of wellness: today, clinical models enjoin a rejection of the Cartesian dichotomy between mind and body, in favor of a more integrated understanding of what wellness consists of (p. 482). More than the mere absence of disease, wellness is the presence of wellbeing in physical, mental, and social domains (p. 482).

The Wheel of Wellness is a model that accords with this new understanding of the characteristics of wellness (Myers & Sweeney, 2008, p. 483). Spirituality is the cardinal feature of this model, with a focus on meaning in life (p. 483). Other aspects of wellness fall under the purview of self-direction: “sense of worth, sense of control, realistic beliefs, emotional awareness and coping,” etc. (p. 483). A more evidence-based model is that of the Indivisible Self, which contains five second-order factors: “Creative, Coping, Social, Essential, and Physical” (p. 484). Each of these domains comprises important aspects of the self: for example, the Essential domain includes spirituality, gender identity, cultural identity, and self-care (p. 484). All of this, of course, has major ramifications for how the counselor views their clients and their clients’ concerns: the counselor can understand the client as an integrated self, with specific domains that have their own wellness needs. By addressing the concerns pertaining to these needs, the counselor can enable the client to reach a level of healthier functioning.

Counselors occupy a number of roles for their clients. As Yager and Hector (1980) explained, the roles of social influence are quite important: the counselor may attain a position of social influence vis-à-vis the client by means of an expert role or a referent role (p. 23). In the expert role, the counselor’s stock in trade is their credibility as an authority: their credentials and the way in which they carry themselves in therapy sessions establishes that they are a legitimate authority, which influences the client to pay heed to them (p. 23). The referent role is another style: with the referent role, the counselor uses attraction, founded in similarity and likeability (p. 23). Such counselors try to influence their clients by encouraging their clients to find them to be very likeable, helpful people (p. 23).

The empathic role is another important role that counselors should learn to occupy (Yager & Hector, 1980, p. 23). The empathic role is grounded in empathy, in the ability to project one’s self into another’s shoes. In the empathic role, the counselor projects themselves into the mind of their client, in order to better ascertain what the client is likely to be thinking and feeling. A key piece of advice for professionals, something Yager and Hector instructed their trainees to observe, is to “make effective use of the pause between the time that the client stops talking and the time that the counselor responds” (p. 23). Counselors should use that pause to ask themselves important questions about how the patient is feeling and thinking, based on everything they have been saying, and their nonverbal cues, i.e. body gestures and facial expressions (p. 23).

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) (n.d.) bills itself as “the professional association for the field of marriage and family therapy” (“About AAMFT”). Their network of over 25,000 therapists in the United States, Canada, and other countries all meet very exacting standards. For example, clinical fellows “have met the rigorous standards of training in marriage and family therapy and are recognized worldwide for these standards” (“AAMFT Membership”). Given that the AAMFT supports research and education, it clearly has much to offer the beginning professional (“About AAMFT”).

Another professional counseling association of interest is the American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA), which has a much more general focus than the AAMFT. The AMHCA consists of about 7,000 practitioners, and is focused on bettering the field of mental health counseling “through licensing, advocacy, education and professional development” (n.d., “About AMHCA”). Benefits of membership include knowledge, support, and recognition, not to mention members-only discounts on a wide variety of services, products, and programs relevant to the field (“Membership Benefits”).

Oregon’s state licensure requirements entail, first, one of three degrees: a graduate degree in the field from an accredited program; a graduate degree determined to be comparable by the Board of Licenses Professional Counselors and Therapists, or a degree determined by the Board “to meet a majority of the graduate degree standards” (Oregon State Archives [OSA], n.d., “Educational”). Programs are accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) (“Educational”). Secondly, experiential requirements: the applicant is required to have “at least three years of full-time supervised clinical experience that consisted of no less than 2,000 supervised client contact hours of therapy with at least 1,000 of those hours working with couples and families” (“Experience”). They must also pass an examination (“Examination”). The present course work at Capella is clearly and manifestly geared towards obtaining such a degree from a duly accredited institution, and will facilitate the other requirements as well.

The findings of Mellin, Hunt, and Nichols (2011) are manifestly of relevance for any consideration of professional development. The provisioning of counseling tasks and services is the first key aspect, one that is foundational to any counselor’s development as a helping professional (p. 143). The services in question comprise the psychological therapy the counselor is offering, and as such are of considerable interest to professional identity development, requiring as they do proficiency in order to help clients (p. 143). This is certainly an area I will rigorously seek to discipline myself in, cultivating and honing my skills towards the end of facilitating improved outcomes for clients.

Secondly, training and credentials, surely foundational to the provision of good psychological services, and to being legally allowed to provide such (Mellin et al., 2011, p. 143). This necessitates a rigorous focus on academic fundamentals, from how to conduct good research to how to write a good paper. Wellness and developmental focus, too, are another important area for professional identity development, because they must guide the overall focus: namely, helping the client to maximize their wellness and self-actualization (p. 143).

Gibson, Dollarhide, and Moss (2010) explained that the process of professional identity is both intrapersonal and interpersonal (p. 22). It requires both a cultivation of personal attributes and professional training, testing and refining of the capabilities of the self, and learning and assessment of those capabilities to come from others (p. 22). Over time, the student progresses from learning the fundamentals from an authority, to increasing levels of proficiency in greater and greater tasks, and finally to the position of an established practitioner (p. 22). Intrapersonally, they are becoming increasingly skilled and capable; interpersonally, they are gaining increased knowledge and recognition (p. 22). It is this path that I must successfully complete if I am to become an accomplished professional.

Technology has many great roles to play in practice. Following Goss and Anthony (2009), one advantage of the new social media is how asynchronous they are: it is possible for people to have exchanges at different times, as they are able, online (p. 226). Video conferencing can greatly expand the times when practitioners and clients can meet, because they no longer have to be in the same place: thus, the practitioner can be much more available to the client (p. 226). Mobile phones, too, provide an excellent and ubiquitous communication channel (p. 227). By using these technologies, the therapist can facilitate the efficacy of their practice by providing their clients with more and better service more of the time. This is the ultimate calling of professional practice, and any way in which technology can be harnessed towards this objective should be counted as a victory.

As a helping professional, it is of manifest importance that the counselor develop their professional identity in a way that will maximize their efficacy in clinical practice. This means an emphasis on those skills and abilities needed to provide their patients with the best quality of psychological services, to be sure. However, it also means something much more foundational: an emphasis on wellness. Wellness consists of a number of components in the integrated self, and the counselor must be prepared to understand these components and the ways in which they go wrong in order to help their patients properly. This is why appropriate education and certification are so important for ensuring quality in the provision of services.

References

American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. (n.d.). About AAMFT. AAMFT. Retrieved from http://www.aamft.org/

—. (n.d.). AAMFT Membership. AAMFT. Retrieved from http://www.aamft.org/

American Mental Health Counselors Association. (n.d.). Membership benefits. AMHCA. Retrieved from http://www.amhca.org/

Gibson, D. M., Dollarhide, C. T., & Moss, J. M. (2010). Professional identity development: A grounded theory of transformational tasks of new counselors. Counselor Education and Supervision, 50(1), pp. 21-38. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/

Goss, S., & Anthony, K. (2009). Developments in the use of technology in counseling and psychotherapy. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 37(3), pp. 223-230. DOI: 10.1080/03069880902956967

Mellin, E. A., Hunt, B., & Nichols, L. M. (2011). Counselor professional identity: Findings and implications for counseling and interprofessional collaboration. Journal of Counseling & Development, 89(2), pp. 140-147. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/

Myers, J. E., & Sweeney, T. J. (2008). Wellness counseling: The evidence base for practice. Journal of Counseling & Development, 86(4), pp. 482-493. DOI: 10.1002/j.1556-6678.2008.tb00536.x

Oregon State Archives. (n.d.). Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists. Oregon State Archives. Retrieved from http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/rules/oars_800/oar_833/833_040.html

Yager, G. G., & Hector, M. A. (1980). Acting the role of the counselor. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 59(1), pp. 21-25. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/