Considering Becoming A Therapist? Four Types Of Counseling That Make A Big Difference To People’s Lives

Becoming a therapist or counselor can be a great way to make a difference to people’s relationships, lives, and mental health, and can also be an interesting and well-paid job. To qualify for a career as a counselor, one option can be to do an online masters in counseling, as this way you can study for your chosen career at your own pace and work around other current jobs or family commitments.

A lot of colleges offer online counseling degree programs, and while studying, you will get to choose the modules most relevant to the kind of work you want to do. However, if you don’t currently have a clear idea of the type of people you want to help, then here are four kinds of counseling that can help clients a lot, which you might want to consider:

Bereavement Counseling

Bereavement counseling is an important role because almost everyone will experience a difficult and painful bereavement at some point in their lives. Counselors specializing in this field will be working with people of all ages and from all walks of life.

Some bereavement counselors specialize even further. For instance, those who focus on parents who have lost children, or people who have lost loved ones to suicide.

Couples’ Counseling

Many couples go through rough patches and often they seek out the help of a therapist to help them work through their problems and save their relationship. This can be a challenging area of therapy as often one partner is more reluctant to attend the sessions than the other, and the problems within relationships can vary wildly.

To some extent, every case is unique. However, this diversity makes the job interesting and also allows you to develop a wealth of experience as you work. It is also rewarding when you help a couple find better ways of dealing with their issues and save a relationship that may otherwise have failed.

Addiction Counseling

People who fall into patterns of prescription or street drug addiction or alcoholism often seek out counseling as part of their rehabilitation. While doctors can help them get over the physical addiction, without counselors to help them get to the bottom of their underlying psychological problems, they are far more likely to relapse, so this is a very important role in helping addicts reclaim their lives.

Trauma Counseling

When someone has been a victim of a serious trauma, which can be anything from violent or sexual crime and abuse through to a traumatic accident, or even witnessing something very disturbing, counseling can often help them work through how they feel about the event in question and begin to move on from it. This kind of counseling can have a big impact on the mental health of the patient and is very important for victims of all kinds of events.

There are, of course, many other fields you can work in, but hopefully, this list has given you some ideas about where you may want to specialize as a counselor.