How to start marriage counseling career is not that easy as people had thought. The problem is majorly because humans can be secretive and self-willed. Therefore, it takes more than just talking to be a professional marriage counselor.
Although marriage is an institution established by God Himself, the need for a marriage counsellor is still very much necessary. That is not to say that God is not perfect; rather, it is to emphasize that marriage is a divine concept and injunction constitutionally set up to help man reproduce and then multiply.
Such divine injunction makes the union of two persons a compulsory condiment in the multiplication of the world. In order to ease the coming together of these two people and avoid a pandemonium, the natural bond called love is created by God. Love, however, becomes the magical magnet which causes attraction between two individuals who are often male and female. This phenomenon causes an emotional connection which will later turn out to be as strong as to force the need for the couple, that is two individuals formerly defined by distance, to come closer and go into marriage.
Distance here means each of the partners possibly comes from different home, environment, family and cultural background which may be dissimilar to the other’s. Thus, disagreements should be expected in their marriage regardless of their religious or social understandings. Out of this problem then, you have the need for a marriage counselor who on the other hand must be wise, experienced, learned, and ingeniously gifted with understanding.
Everyone wants to play the role of a marriage counselor. Even those whose lives are unsettled, the single who know nothing about marriage, the single mother or father whose marriages crashed not because their partners died but because of self-caused crisis, want to be marriage counselors. BUT it goes just beyond that!
How to Start Marriage Counseling Career.
If you have interest in the peaceful union of couples or the rearrangement of marital peace and harmony, it is high time you learnt how to start marriage counseling career. Marriage is the smallest unit of the society; this means it is the cradle of what any society becomes. This fact then reiterates the importance of a very professional and successful person in an excelling marriage counseling career:
1. Get A University Degree
One of the steps on how to start marriage counseling career is getting a university degree first. You see, apart from being imbued with natural talents, abilities and social values such as Communication, Problem-solving Ability, Compassion, Sociability, Scrupulous, Honesty, Integrity, etc., it is important that prospective marriage counselor also get to study any of the following courses in the university: Psychology, Sociology, Psychiatry, Nursing, Counseling, Social work, Philosophy, History, and so on.
A vast knowledge in any of these plus your social values and natural abilities are prerequisites to embarking fully on the marriage counseling career.
2. Earn Post-Graduate Degrees
Having just a degree is not enough preparation; it is necessary that one gets some postgraduate studies in order to break every jinx of limitation in the field. For instance, imagine someone who has a vast knowledge of psychology practicing the career! Such individual will have all the modus operandi which helps one make out the many dynamics of the human psyche and even the human behavioral interactions accompanied with how to solve them.
3. Get An Experience
The popular saying that experience is the best teacher is not a waste in this field at all. According to statistics, it is proven that many organizations and employers usually prefer the experienced people to the inexperience but educated ones. You must have had a clinch with someone who’s been in the field for you to really learn how to administer basic therapy, provide a mental health diagnosis, support patients through talk therapy and consulting, handle common mental health challenges, such as anxiety, depression, marriage and couple issues and family conflict, help patients understand the reasons for their behavior and how it affects others, or assist patients in exploring alternative ways of thinking to enhance their mental health.
These will at least help you perform your professional role perfectly.
4. Get a Marriage and Family Therapist License
With academic qualifications and clinical experience, aspiring marriage counselors typically fulfill the requirements for obtaining a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) license. However, since licenses are state-specific, you may need to meet more prerequisites, especially if you move or practice in more than one state.
To ensure you’re ready for licensure, you can call your state’s Board of Licensed Professional Counselors, contact former professors or talk to your target employer for more information.
5. Secure Your Employment or Establish Your Own Office
Marriage counselors could get employment easily after they have successfully garnered all the necessaries such as experience, education, license, etc. These employments could happen in established religious houses, courts, and other related organizations where marriage forms the basic core of their value.
On the other hand, with the license to practice as a counselor, you can also start an office of your own and really get to practice in full the professional obligations of the career.
