I emphasized the importance of portability for licensed professional counselors in last month’s From the President column. This month, I want to discuss counselor identity, which is closely related to licensure portability. It is my belief that having a consensus identity is not only important for counselor licensure portability but also
Category: Counseling Today
Summer 2019 update: The American Counseling Association has created a state-by-state guide with updated information on licensure requirements across the country. Go to counseling.org/knowledge-center/licensure-requirements for information on licensure in your state or U.S. territory. **** It’s a frustrating scenario that happens all too often. A counselor moves to a
Positive social change is possible. It is often slow and halting, but it does happen. In the past decade, people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) have experienced some positive change regarding their human rights and societal attitudes. As of this writing, 37 states and the District
In the winter of 2014, I bedded down for a long-deserved rest. As a counselor educator, I basked in the idea that after posting final grades, the university would be closed for the holiday season. With a full private practice, often seeing 25 clients a week, I had made the
Through our traumas, we are often at risk of ingesting our perpetrators, continuing to perpetuate the same cycles of abuse and abandonment on ourselves and on others, and believing the messages of unworthiness communicated through the injuries that were inflicted. Left unchecked, these messages can be fully absorbed like toxins
Counselors Jeffrey Kottler and Richard Balkin delivered a fast-paced, information-packed keynote talk peppered with humor, visual clips and abundant insight this morning at the ACA 2015 Conference & Expo in Orlando, Florida. The duo kicked off the conference’s second day with an address about the importance of relationships – both
The most important thing a counselor can do is to provide a safe space for a person to explore and tell his or her own story. That was the message that Mariel Hemingway, an actress, activist and granddaughter of iconic novelist Ernest Hemingway, delivered to a standing-room-only crowd of counselors
Imagine if people reacted to a friend or neighbor’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder or depression no differently than if they just learned that person has breast cancer or heart disease. “Whether an illness affects your heart, your leg or your brain, it’s still an illness. It shouldn’t be treated differently,”
Highly trained and uniquely skilled, school counselors are often the first – and sometimes the only – mental health professionals a young student sees. They’re an essential piece of the American educational system — a piece that deserves support and funding. That’s the message a panel of counselors gave on
Denial is a powerful defense mechanism, and despite all of our knowledge and training as counselors, many of us still stick our heads in the sand concerning the potential for the unexpected to affect us, our practices and our clients. In dealing with insurance companies, taking notes, handling phone calls