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Counseling is a time-honored profession. While people used to receive it from the village shaman or neighborhood wise woman, though, it is now a professional career in which you have the opportunity to help people from a wide variety of backgrounds, populations and ages.

If you’ve spent your life looking for ways to help people better theirs, counseling might be the profession for you. It requires patience, kindness and a whole lot of listening, but it also offers the opportunity to constantly increase your skills, deepen your compassion, learn more about people and – let’s be honest, this is important as well – make a pretty good paycheck.

Before you dive headfirst into a counseling program, however, it’s important to make sure it’s the career for you. Learning more about what a professional counselor is, does, and experiences on a day to day basis can help you make a much more informed decision. If you’re ready to learn more about your next possible career, sit down, and let’s get started.

What Is a Licensed Professional Counselor?

Licensed professional counselors – which may also be referred to aslicensed mental health counselorsor licensed clinical professional counselors – are trained to work with groups, families and individual people in a clinical setting or private practice. They may address mental, emotional, social or behavioral issues, all with an eye towards helping people find better alternatives to unhealthy ways of dealing with the challenges of daily living.

While there are many different professions with the same basic goal, licensed professional counselors make up the bulk of the expert population when it comes to treating these issues.

At the most basic level, however, licensed professional counselors help people get better, wherever possible. They help them move past trauma, deal with grief, learn to engage with other people in a healthy manner, heal from addiction and live full lives even with mental illness. They provide therapy, encourage families and couples to work together as teams and essentially … they counsel.

What Does a Licensed Professional Counselor Do?

Licensed professional counselors may work as mental health service providers, whose main role is to assess people for disorders and provide courses of treatment. They may also help treat people or families for specific, already known conditions: congenital disorders, shared traumas, or even simple differences of opinion that make living together and communicating difficult.

Typically, counselors spend most their time engaging in talk therapy. They provide counseling to married couples to help them strengthen their relationship, and to provide a more stable home environment for their children. They consult with companies and organizations to assist with change management, differing opinions, buyouts and mergers, and other difficult situations. They also help with children, teenagers, adults and the elderly deal with cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal and mental health issues. In doing all this, they may simultaneously gather information for research.

Counselors may be responsible for one, multiple, or all of the following duties:

… and so much more. It is important to note, that before you can perform any of these duties and services for the people in your community, you must meet strict minimum requirements to be deemed qualified.

Licensed Professional Counselor Qualifications

Licensed professional counselors must meet several qualifications before working, and using the title “Licensed Professional Counselor”:

Typical Work Environment & Occupational Challenges

Licensed professional counselors may take on a wide variety of more specific roles, which will influence their work environments and typical challenges. For instance, about65,300people are engaged in marriage and family therapy, and the numbers are growing all the time. Many of these practice individual and family services, while others provide care in state and local government institutions. They may work in outpatient centers or nursing homes, schools and hospitals, or residential care facilities and foster homes.

Mental health counselors provide similar services, but with a stronger focus specifically on mental health disorders. They too can be found practicing individual and family services, frequently work in outpatient mental health and substance abuse centers, help people overcome intellectual and developmental disability – often in mental health or substance abuse facilities – and can even work in advisory roles in the private sector.

Frequently, counselors work in private practice. They lease their own offices, then see people on an individual, couples, or family basis. In this setting, they use talk therapy to help individuals deal with issues in life, ranging from abuse to mental health disorders to relationship problems. They may sometimes travel to meet patients, or even work with them over electronic media, such as Skype.

In a self-employment role, counselors will have to do their own marketing, which can be one of their main challenges. This is not necessary when working for institutions. However, no matter what role you take on, you will frequently have to deal with the emotional weight of difficult situations: abuse and neglect of children or the elderly, domestic violence and even the distressing outcomes of war.

Plus, most counselors work full time, and put in lots of hours in the evenings and on weekends to accommodate client schedules. This can lead to burnout and overwhelm if you aren’t careful, as can the sometimes-burdensome takes of working with insurance companies to get paid. Make sure, if you become a counselor, that you plan plenty of rest and balance into your schedule to avoid this occurring.

Licensed Professional Counselor Salary & Job Outlook

More good news? The field is also growing: at a rate of22%, to be exact, which is much faster than average. If you go to school for a degree in counseling, you may very well enjoy a long career in this rapidly expanding field.

Licensed Professional Counselor Jobs & Job Description

Many mental health counselors use cognitive therapy, which helps people addresshowthey think about various issues. They may also use behavioral therapy, which addresses the connection between thoughts and behaviors with the goal of curbing unhealthy behaviors and substituting healthier ones. Other counselors help ensure that patients who have been put on a medical treatment plan have been responding well. Still others gather information and diagnoses to report to health care teams.

Licensed professional counselors must possess a range of important skills and knowledge. Their scope of duty requires that they:

Licensed Professional Counselor Degrees & Education

Counselors help people, plain and simple. Yes, the road to private practice or a good job at with an organization can be long, but if your goal is to better the world and the lives of the people around you, there’s no better way to do it than this.

Learn more aboutonline counseling degreesandcounseling schools.

2022 US Bureau of Labor Statistics job market trends and salary figures formarriage and family therapistsandmental health counselorsare based on national data, not school-specific information. Conditions in your area may vary. Data accessed July 2023.

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