Welcome to our “Why I Want to Be a Counselor” essay! This reflection paper will describe the goals and role of counseling in our lives. Read it to get ideas for your essay.
Why I Want to Be a Counselor: Essay Introduction
A counselor engages in the process of paying attention to different clients and offers advice, assistance, and guidance on how to handle their difficulties and psychological issues. Counseling is concerned with individuals and relationships in which assistance, direction, and problem-solving are provided (Singh, et al., 2020). Counselors help clients find ways of exploring and discovering the means of leading a more satisfying and resourceful life.
How I Started Seeing Myself as a Counselor: Essay Main Body
I contemplated becoming a counselor in my last year of high school education. When I wrote the Why I Want to Be a Counselor essay, I keep in mind that I did not have the privilege of interacting with a counselor from my enrollment to secondary school until my final year. My interaction with the counselor assisted me in choosing my career, avoiding substance abuse, adapting to college life, and developing excellent behavior to be healthy mentally. With this in mind, I esteem the need to counsel young people who are required to make crucial decisions in their careers, and relationships, and avoid negative influence by peers. There are dynamics in the world today that present diverse challenges that people may find difficult to deal with on their own, and counseling can help in these situations (Drosos et al., 2021).
My Principles as a Counselor: Essay Main Body
Myself as a future counselor in this essay I want to emphasize that a successful counselor should be in a position to pay attention to the clients, communicate effectively, and work with them to devise the most appropriate way of dealing with a difficult situation. While working with clients, a counselor must make a difference in their lives by first understanding their anxieties and situations, and then developing cooperation so that they can open up to them (Pordelan & Hosseinian, 2021). I see myself as a counselor who should strive to ensure that clients hold on to their dreams, build strong relationships, utilize the skills learned, are relieved from all kinds of pain, and impact the lives of others positively.
To be an effective counselor one requires various attributes that may be possessed while others are learned. The “Why I want to be a counselor” essay can help me to designate the most important of them. Top of the list of skills that I have is a natural aptitude for paying attention to an individual and expressing my opinions and feelings plainly to another person. As a counselor, I am obliged to admit the client at their present state and relay the acceptance warmly and appreciatively. I can feel and imagine what the other person is going through, which may make a client feel well served (Singh et al., 2020). A counselor may not have solutions to all the client’s problems but should at least possess the skills of problem-solving, which I do. In this case, the client can identify destructive thoughts and behaviors responsible for issues encountered and is assisted in changing them. Since counseling requires developing positive relationships, I have relational skills that can help in creating rapport with the client.
The client ought to build trust with the counselor by being offered exclusive attention that is not diverted by personal issues. As a counselor, I can adapt to the needs of clients and change the approach to solving problems rather than having a pre-set way of handling them. An effective counselor must maintain professionalism, which is possible when personal unmet needs and desires are identified to avoid conflict with those of the client (Drosos et al., 2021). To cap it all, I am in a position to attend to clients from any cultural, religious, or socioeconomic background. There are some skills not in my possession as a student, which I may need to learn. They include skills on how to communicate effectively using technology where emails can be sent to clients for the successful delivery of crucial information or lessons. Moreover, the collection of data on the progress of the counseling program and how to analyze it requires skills that I need to learn as well as being able to communicate to clients and stakeholders in public forums.
My values in the counseling process are meant to uphold the honesty, independence, and authority of the client so that I can respect human rights and differences existing among individuals and cultures. Respect requires that I admit a client impartially, regardless of the culture they hold or any personal differences. Upon developing acceptance, integrity demands that I do not exploit the client, but observe the physical and emotional limits while providing support. Myself as a counselor, I need to understand the client’s authority in developing the relationship and the vested power of decision-making, allowing for self-expression and articulation of their needs and opinions (Pordelan & Hosseinian, 2021). Observing privacy and confidentiality is essential in the counseling process since there is a build-up of trust by the client while imposition by others is avoided.
When working with clients from a different culture, I must start by identifying the issues for which assistance is being sought, through a culturally acceptable manner that avoids the direct method of receiving answers. My cultural background, cultural ethics, and life experiences make it necessary for me to enable the client to value cultural diversity while at the same time maintaining professionalism and competence when delivering solutions to the client’s problems. Some of the ethical considerations for working in a helping profession entail seeking to know more about the client’s culture, valuing cultural diversity, and showing respect for holding certain views and different ways of problem-solving so that a bond can be established. Identifying personal beliefs that differ from those of others can aid in the discovery of prejudices and stereotypical views about clients from other cultures (Singh et al., 2020). Self-awareness works to help me improve in counseling clients who hold onto a different culture.
Why I Want to Be a Therapist: Essay Conclusion
I am interested in school counseling in the area of career development as well as helping students socially, psychologically, and academically. This entails providing information on psychological and social issues through such subjects as sex education and seminars on skills development. Myself as a counselor, in the essay of 300 words, I look forward to helping students prepare for college life after selecting their careers in addition to assisting them in avoiding negative peer pressure. Students should also be counseled on how to arbitrate conflicts among peers, teachers, or parents. Maintaining academic standards, the realization of set goals, developing skills on how to improve organization, study habits, and time management, improving social skills, and identifying strengths and interests are other areas I would offer guidance. There is a need to bring about professional development in counseling so that the help to students can be more effective. This is accomplished by having access to timely and important counseling information and staying current on developments in the field (Drosos et al., 2021). I would also venture into carrying out more research to obtain data that can be used in the formulation of policies involving school counseling.
Some principles guide a counselor in ensuring effectiveness in their work. They entail acting as per the proficient standards, confidentiality, and enabling clients to open up. Counselors are required to engage in that which can be executed freely and impartially, uphold cultural diversity, develop themselves personally and professionally, and maintain a favorable counseling environment.
References
Drosos, N., Theodoroulakis, M., Antoniou, A., & Rajter, I. C. (2021). Career services in the post‐COVID‐19 era: A paradigm for career counseling unemployed individuals. Journal of Employment Counseling, 58(1), 36–48.
Pordelan, N., & Hosseinian, S. (2021). Online career counseling success: the role of hardiness and psychological capital. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 1-19.
Singh, A. A., Appling, B., & Trepal, H. (2020). Using the multicultural and social justice counseling competencies to decolonize counseling practice: The important roles of theory, power, and action. Journal of Counseling & Development, 98(3), 261–271.