Counselor Professional Identity

1. Counselor Professional Identity Community Mental Health Counseling Summer 2012 Molly Stehn, MA, PC

2. Why talk about professional identity? • “What does it matter how I identify myself as a professional? Aren’t my coworkers and I all basically doing the same thing?” • How is this statement true? • In what ways might it not be true?

3. ACA Definition of Counseling “Counseling is a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and career goals.” • 20/20: A Vision for the Future of Counseling, American Counseling Association

4. Rather broad, huh?

5. Discussion Please pair up and discuss the following: • Given the rather vague description on the previous slide, what is it that we do, exactly? • What specific ways do you see counseling as being unique as a helping profession? • That is, how are we, as counselors, different from psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers?

6. The Class’s Answers • Counselors do not prescribe medications (MDs and APRNs do) • Counselors try to get to the root of the problem (others work from more of a medical model) • Counselors would be less reliant on dx if it weren’t for third party reimbursement. • Counselors may be more creative with interventions (we don’t have to follow a certain model or style of interview as opposed to psychiatrists, who have limits on how they practice, or psychologists who do more psychological testing).

7. Class’s answers continued • Counselors help people to help themselves (empower our clients) • Depending on the site, sometimes our scope is limited (e.g. working in vocational rehab agency) • Counselors receive more supervision (and possibly more training in clinical experience) prior to independent licensure • Educational vs. clinical • Development vs. remediation • Preventive vs. medical • Holistic

8. Discussion continued “That’s all well and good in theory, but what does that look like in practice?” • How do you incorporate the ideas that we came up with into your work at your placement site? • What makes it difficult to incorporate these ideas? And let’s be honest, which of these do we have a hard time wrapping our heads around?

9. So now what? • How might we challenge ourselves to better embody the professional identity we have been discussing, despite the challenges we have identified? • What are your strengths that you bring to your work, and how can you use them to practice counseling as we have been talking about it?