My Journey to Becoming a Licensed Professional Counselor in California - Free Essay

Introduction

My career plan is to offer emotional therapy services for clinical patients with mental health issues. Becoming a licensed professional counselor in California is a challenging journey that involves many mandatory steps. The first step in this quest is to obtain a bachelor’s degree in counseling (Cates, 2020). Upon getting my first degree, I plan to enroll for Master of Science in trauma therapy. As part of my master's training, I will seek employment or an internship in a counseling office to attain the required contact hours in clinical counseling. Upon completing the master's degree program, I will take the Counselor Preparation Comprehensive Examination to enable me to obtain the national professional counseling certification from the National Board of Certified Counselors. With that, I will have gotten all the necessary credentials to obtain professional licensure in my specialty. According to Cates (2020), the requirements for obtaining state licensing may vary from one state to another, but the training and supervised experience demands are the same across the country.

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Clientele I Wish to Serve

I wish to serve everyone suffering from emotional or psychological trauma. In the United States, statistics show that patients of all ages present with symptoms associated with past traumatic experiences. However, traumatic incidences are more common in children and youth below the age of 29 than any other group (Saunders & Adams, 2014). I, therefore, suppose that the majority of my clients will be children and adolescents. I also wish to work with families and couples because trauma in children often impacts their parents and caregivers. Besides, I also look forward to helping youth as well as older adults to coup with trauma. I am likely to work with more female patients than male ones. Olff (2017) conducted a study to determine the differences in post-traumatic stress disorder by sex and gender and found that women are up to three times at higher risk of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder than men. These statistics should reflect on the population of PTSD patients across the country.

The Services I Plan to Offer

I plan to offer clinical psychotherapy services for trauma patients and counseling for their families and caregivers. I will also offer supervisory services for counselors treating trauma patients. I intend to use trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF–CBT) as my primary technique. TF–CBT is a model of treatment for resolving a wide range of behavioral and emotional difficulties arising from complex, multiple, or single traumatic experiences (Campbell, 2014). It uses family theory and cognitive behavior to diagnose and treat traumatic events. According to Campbell (2014), the model is guided by the theory that trauma patients experience difficulty in processing strong and complex feelings and emotions associated with exposure to traumatic events.

My Plan for On-going Supervision

I plan to have ongoing supervision to help me continue to grow and improve on my work. I will carefully identify a few potential mentors among my senior colleagues and choose the one I prefer to work with based on their psychotherapy experience and supervisory training. Since it is not mandatory to have a supervisor attending every counseling session, I plan to attend to clients by myself and then share notes with my supervisors. However, if I get to work for an organization as a psychotherapist, I will not need a private supervisor because most employers have their own. Nonetheless, I remain open to construction supervision and mentorship based on any supervisory orientation. I will also take part in proficiency seminars as well as supervised empirical studies to continue building my specialty in a counseling career.

References

Campbell, A. W. (2014). Comparative analysis of trauma focused-cognitive-Behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) and Adlerian therapy. Journal of Trauma & Treatment, 03(03). https://doi.org/10.4172/2167-1222.1000201

Cates, K. (2020). Counselor preparation comprehensive examination (CPCE). Center for Credentialing & Education (CCE). https://www.cce-global.org/assessmentsandexaminations/cpce

Olff, M. (2017). Sex and gender differences in post-traumatic stress disorder: An update. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 8(sup4), 1351204. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2017.1351204

Saunders, B. E., & Adams, Z. W. (2014). undefined. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 23(2), 167-184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2013.12.003