Analysis of My Professional Competence as a Psychotherapist - Essay Example

?The profession of counseling Me as a person: How competent am I as a counselor? What are my strengths and weakness? These are two of many questions deserving of counselor self- assessment. The American Counseling Association (ACA) emphasizes the value of counselor self-awareness in order to accurately appraise one’s skills and competence (ACA, 1995). ACA ethics also requires counselors to monitor and enhance their skills when needed. Self-assessing one’s performance is important in order to answer these questions and determine the scope of practice. Three words that best describe me as a person love, patient, and consistent. I have a very loving nature. I assume that people around me are good unless they prove themselves otherwise. This is contrary to the approach people adopt to perceive others generally, but I believe that if one hopes for the best, one has the best. Therefore, I tend to be optimistic in my approach towards understanding others. I deal others the way I would like others to deal me. This helps me love the people around me and not only remain happy but also cheer others up. My optimism has inculcated patience in me. When I assume others to be good, I give them time and not alter my perception of them because of one or two bad experiences. I know that in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, several things make the people go out of their mind several times in a day. But if one remains patient and deals others with love, love blows away agitation from them and regulates their temperament. Thus, it is important to be patient in everyday dealing. Without consistency, a person is never complete no matter how good a set of qualities he/she displays at a certain point in time. Consistency makes the qualities permanent and provides an individual with control over his/her qualities. Consistency enables an individual to be in the right mood all the time which increases the solidarity of the decisions he/she takes from time to time. Thus, my consistency lends strength to my love and patience towards others. Me at interpersonal interaction: Although I am a very social person, and consider criticism as constructive, yet I do not compromise when it comes to calling a spade a spade. I believe that one’s behavior should be calm, but I equally emphasize that one should always say and do what is right. Nevertheless, I never expect the other person to change his/her opinion for me immediately as I tell him to. Instead, I try to convince the other person into agreeing with me by making him/her realize what is right through adequate reasoning, proof and evidence. In addition to that, I let the other person take his/her time to realize what is right. While interacting with others, I always call them by their proper names. In our society, people tend to call one another by nicks that are not their proper names and are indeed offending for many people. I have realized that calling people by their proper names not only shows them that I respect them, but also convinces them to call me by my proper name and respect me the same way. So far, I have mainly discussed the positive attributes of my personality and interpersonal communication, but I am a human being and weaknesses are a necessary part of me in that capacity. Two of my key weaknesses that affect my interpersonal interaction are smoking and lying. I regret having started smoking five years ago. I cannot help smoking despite the fact that I know how harmful it is for my health as well as image in the public to some extent. Many people have told me that smoking does not suit me. The kind of person I am understood by the people around me in general should principally not be smoking. People find it difficult to digest that a person that tends to give logic for everything and tells others to abstain from wrong things and adopt the right habits himself does something as purposeless, meaningless and harmful as smoking. A lot of people have told me to quit it but this is one thing that I have unintentionally made a necessary part of my personality over the years. In an attempt to justify my points of view, I often lie. This ruins the validity and reliability of my opinion even if it is right because I tend to back it up with lie. One should not go up to the limit that one needs to take the help of lie in order to justify one’s point. I really feel bad about this habit and am trying to achieve control over it. Life experiences: Life is uncertain and may end anytime, anywhere. I used to think that I was not likely to die at least before seventy years unless I went through this dreadful experience. One day, I was sitting in my bedroom. My nephews were playing with each other in my bedroom. One threw metallic keys towards the other. The other caught them and in turn, threw them into the air for the other to catch. The game was going nice until one of them threw the keys high enough to touch the blade of the fan hanging from the ceiling. I must tell that that fan was turned on while they were playing and the blades with moving in the circular pattern with full speed. The metallic keys hit the blade and were thrown towards the tube light with full momentum. The tube light burst and the glass shattered. All of this happened in the fraction of a second. The fan was swirling and it seemed that it would also come down any moment but thank God it did not. It was a dreadful accident and could have caused immediate death of all three of us. One piece of mirror missed my left through the distance of less than a centimeter. From this experience, I learned that life may end up anywhere any time, so we must correct our deeds in order to be safe in the world hereafter. During my undergraduate, experience with a patient of major depression taught me the importance of active listening. I tried to study the patient for the whole month but could not figure out what was causing him the issue until I started to pay attention towards the minor details in his speech. Family and culture influences: Time is money. It should not be wasted. This is something my parents have been teaching me since my early childhood. If I am punctual today, the whole credit goes to my parents. I have always tried to manage time in the best possible way. The principal in the school I work in is very critical about punctuality. My punctuality and time management impresses him. I particularly came to know that when he named me among the most punctual staff members. Flexibility is something, in my opinion, I have learned from my life experience. Flexibility helps me when I am working in special education around people with different cultural background. My flexibility enables me to broaden my view by looking at things from others’ perspective. From my family, I have learned the importance of being my own self in all circumstances. The society tries to influence an individual in many negative ways. In such circumstances, it is the objectivity of one’s own vision and the solidarity of one’s own personality that allows the individual to stick to his/her values. Additionally, my family has always encouraged me to behave well with people and takie care of them. When I do that in my practical life, it improves my rapport with my colleagues as well as the disabled children. The counseling skills: A counselor is “someone who is a therapist, which could mean a licensed clinical social worker, a marriage and family counselor (MFC or MFCC), a psychologist or even a psychiatrist who conducts regular therapy sessions” (Ellis-Christensen, 2011). Counseling is the term used for modifying other’s behavior by way of intervention. Aim of counseling is to assist others and enable them to become good choosers of alternatives (Lister, 2008). Therefore, the first and foremost goal of a counselor should be to develop the required level of psychological intimacy and rapport with the patient. This would allow the patient to develop an understanding with the counselor in which, he/she would openly discuss his/her fears and worries with the counselor. How I landed into the profession of counseling: I am currently working in the field of special education, so I have to deal with children and parents on daily basis. I came from Middle East. Coming to USA and finishing my education here was my dream. I have always loved psychology and was fortunate enough to come into this profession. I enjoy the dynamics involved in helping parents understand their child’s psychology and issues. I enjoy doing my work in the classroom setting, helping to make learning a possibility for the student. There were quite a lot of experiences that encouraged me to choose counseling a profession, one of them being working in the school system and getting to know and interact with a lot of people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. While I was working in the school, one of my colleagues who was also a foreigner like me had had difficulty in communicating with others in English because English was not her first language and she had developed very little fluency in speaking English over the years. I suggested her to go to school and take a full course of English. In the start, she did not approve of my suggestion, but now she appreciates having acceded to it later as now she is quite competent in speaking English. My sister who has four kids almost lost all hope when she found out that she was a cancer patient. The depression that she acquired upon getting to know of the disease was doing her more harm than cancer itself. She could not take care of her family the way she did in the past because of the stress. I counseled her and encouraged her to keep high hopes. I realized that as I spoke more, it would draw her out of her tension. I convinced her to have the operation done, and by the grace of God, the operation was successful. Personal strengths and weaknesses that influence learning of the counseling: Three strengths that enable an individual to become an effective counselor are a loving nature, patience and consistency. I have already discussed how each of these strengths improves an individual’s tendency to become a counselor. Counseling is a work of patience. An individual who remains eager in his mannerism is not likely to be successful as a counselor. Quite often, the counselor has to try a lot of strategies before deciding which one works the best for a particular case. This makes counseling a fairly intricate work. Thus, an individual that tends to do routine work and avoid challenges cannot be successful as a counselor.” In a therapeutic relationship where the therapist endeavors to keep himself out, as separate person, and where his whole endeavor is to understand the other so completely”(Rogrers,1951, p.42) Being judgmental is also a weakness. A counselor needs to have sufficient experience with a particular client before making any predictions about the client’s personality. People who tend to quickly build impression of the patients and make inferences about their personalities without sound reasoning may not be successful as a counselor. Hence, a loving nature, patience, and consistency are the strengths of a counselor while eagerness, escape from challenges and judgmental nature are the weaknesses of a counselor. Active listening is also a potential strength for an individual as a counselor (Faller, 2011). Most challenging patients: For a counselor, most challenging patients are those who suffer from major depression or are the patients of schizophrenia. It is very difficult to locate the problem of such patients, because they are hardly ever compromising. I need to be very patient and critical in my examination while dealing with such patients. I am not the one walk away from challenge. If I have difficulty case like that or other case, I will continue to read, to listen, and more important to be with patient and listen. Feedback: Counseling is a very challenging profession. Sometimes, only exchange of few words can work wonder for some people, while in other cases, the counselor needs to facilitate the process of counseling to help the individuals. Therapy ought to begin with an exploration of the client expectations and goals (Corey, 2009, p.24). Sometimes, the counselor may need to develop a whole strategy in order to make the patient come out of his/her distress without letting him/her realize what is being done to him/her. In any case, in order to be successful, it is imperative that the counselor makes an in-depth analysis of the psychology of the patient and get to the root cause of problem. This can be achieved by conducting structured or semi-structured interviews with the patients. The choice of interview that works best for a particular kind of patient varies from case to case. In a vast majority of cases, the patients do not feel comfortable sharing their most secretive opinions, ideas and matters with a stranded to explore what they hope to obtain from the counseling relationship (Corey, 2009, p.24). I believe that the importance of ethics is the highest standers of thinking and conduct professional counseling seek, and it requires that counselors do more than simply ethics code. Counselor has to put the client’s needs first. As a positive counselor, I will treat every person with the respect, and also keep in mind that I am that I am the choice the clients have made and I will work hard to ensure that I am always considering “best practice”. In addition, accurate self- assessment may be challenging to obtain. Yet, such perception in measuring performance may be necessary for counselor to maintain and enhance of his or her boundaries of competence. I think of this current self-assessment essay is important to increase in myself understanding, and assess and examining my skills as a counselor in training. References: Ellis-Christensen, T. (2011). What is a Counselor? Retrieved from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-counselor.htm. Faller, M. (2011). Skills Needed to Become a Good Counselor. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/way_5784234_skills-needed-become-good-counselor.html. Lister, I. K. (2008). Being a Good Counselor. Retrieved from http://www.suite101.com/content/being-a-good-counselor-a42394. Read More