Psychological counseling training materials

There is no such thing as a 3-month quick fix for a qualified counselor. A reliable training core ratio must be 3 points of systematic theory, 4 points of clinical practice under supervision, 2 points of ethical standard learning, and 1 point of personal experience of the counselor. No single school of training can cover the needs of all cases.

Some time ago, I met a newbie in the industry supervision group. He spent NT$999 to sign up for an online job that "obtained a psychological counseling license in 3 months." After learning a little bit about hypnosis, he dared to accept fee-based cases. He did an age regression for a client with childhood trauma and directly triggered the person's dissociation reaction. He panicked and was at a loss. In the end, he found a supervisor and spent three consultations to help the client stabilize his condition. To be honest, in the past two years, I have seen as many as 20 to 15 newbies like this. Most of them were fooled into the job by the gimmicks of "guaranteed employment" and "high hourly wages", and dared to take up the job without even learning the most basic crisis intervention procedures.

Talking about theoretical learning, there has never been a unified standard in the industry that “you must learn a certain genre first”. Psychoanalytically oriented training institutions will require you to read through the core works of Freud, Jung, and Klein, and understand what transference is and what defense mechanisms are before you can approach a case. ； People-oriented training, on the contrary, thinks that no matter how much theory you memorize, it is useless. You must first practice the basic listening skills of "not interrupting, not judging, and not giving random suggestions" for 30 hours before you get down to business. ； The introductory training of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is even more straightforward. You will be asked to memorize commonly used scales and practice structured interview procedures at the beginning. The first lesson will teach you how to set consultation goals with the client. Oh, by the way, I also encountered a pitfall when I first entered the industry in the early years. I signed up for an offline job that focused on "practical psychoanalysis". Every day, I listened to the instructor bragging about how many difficult cases he had solved. In the end, I didn't even learn how to write the initial interview record, and I simply paid the IQ tax. In fact, there is no need to worry about the genre when studying theory. Just find a direction that you can listen to and get started. When you come into contact with more cases, you will naturally know which tools are easy to use.

Compared with the debate about which theory to learn first, what is more important is whether you have the opportunity to actually take on the cases. To put it bluntly, psychological counseling is similar to learning to drive. It is useless to get a perfect score in one subject. If you don’t drive thousands of kilometers on the road, you will never know how to react when you encounter traffic jams or slippery roads in rainy days. An offline training site I stayed at before requires all trainees to answer the public welfare psychological hotline for 30 hours. After each call, they must write a verbatim draft. The supervisor will answer the questions word by word in the verbatim draft. For example, if you encounter a visitor who says "I don't want to live anymore," don't just say "Don't think so." The correct first reaction is to first ask, "Is there anyone around you who can accompany you now?" Are there any specific plans? ”, just this sentence, I practiced it no less than ten times before I corrected the problem of subconsciously trying to comfort people.

As for ethical standards, there are actually different voices in the industry, and there is no absolute standard answer. Trainees of classic psychoanalysis will strictly abide by the principle of "zero contact outside the consultation room". Let alone like the visiting friends, they will actively avoid them even if they encounter them on the road, for fear of breaking the consultation setting. ； However, many counselors who do narrative therapy and solution-focused short-term therapy will feel that as long as the dual relationship is not broken and the interests of the client are not harmed, for example, if you happen to go to the coffee shop owned by the client to buy a cup of coffee and pay normally without revealing the identity of both parties, there is no need to overdo it. Of course, the bottom line is the same: you cannot accept gifts that exceed the market value from the client, you cannot develop an intimate relationship with the client outside of consultation, and you cannot deliberately lengthen the consultation period in order to charge more money. As long as the choice you make is based on the client’s interests first, you will basically not make a big mistake.

Finally, let me talk about the personal experience that many novices are resistant to - that is, the counselors themselves are doing the counseling as the client. A trainee I taught before had a very strong empathic ability and always received good feedback from cases. Until I met a visitor with postpartum depression. After talking to her three times, she collapsed first. Later, she found out during personal experience that she had been in a low mood for half a year after giving birth. She had been suppressing it and not dealing with it. When she met a visitor with the same frequency, she was overloaded with empathy, mixing her own emotions with the visitor's emotions. You see, counselors are not emotionless tree holes. If you haven’t filled the hole in your own heart, it is easy to fall into it when you encounter similar cases. This is not a pretentious request. It is responsible for yourself and the client.

To be honest, there is no myth of getting rich overnight in this industry, nor is there any magical skill that can be learned instantly. I have seen too many novices who dared to accept fee-based cases after half a year of training. In the end, they either couldn't deal with the trauma of the visits, or they suffered from emotional problems themselves. When choosing training, don’t just look at how impressive the advertisements are. Ask first whether there is stable individual supervision, whether there are opportunities for step-by-step practical training, and whether it will force you to only accept the “truth” of one school. After all, what you have to face are real people, not standardized cases in books. How solid you are, how far you can go with the visitors.