Psychological counseling training materials

For all psychological counseling training on the market that allows you to handle cases independently after graduation, the core ratio must be 1/3 systematic theoretical learning + 1/3 practical training + 1/3 personal experience and ethical discipline. If any link is missing, it will be like cutting leeks. This is the consensus of the survey of 37 domestic registered system supervisors and front-line consultants who have been in the industry for more than 10 years. **

When I was reviewing the training system for a chain of psychological counseling institutions in East China last year, I met a young girl who had just received a graduation certificate from an institution.

She saved 30,000 yuan and studied for half a year. She knew CBT automatic thought recognition, psychoanalytic defense mechanisms, and humanistic empathy techniques by heart, but she hit a wall the first time she took on a public welfare case.

The visitor is a 22-year-old girl. The first thing she said when she sat down was, "My mother forces me to take the public exam every day. I almost jumped off the balcony yesterday." Her first reaction was not to assess the crisis first, but to quickly think, "Oh, this is an irrational belief. I need to empathize first and then guide her to recognize automatic thinking." As soon as she said, "I understand how you feel," the visitor stood up and slammed the door and left.

You see, this is a typical example of "memorizing a lot of knowledge, but it's all useless when it comes to using it."

There has been a lot of quarrel in the industry about how much theory you need to learn.

Most counselors from academic backgrounds will say that they must first spend 1-2 years studying basic courses such as general psychology, developmental psychology, abnormal psychology, and psychological measurement. If they can't even distinguish the difference between hallucinations and delusions, and the key points of identifying bipolar disorder and severe depression, then they dare to take on a case. What is the difference between going to the operating table with someone who has never learned anatomy?

However, the consultants from the practical school also feel that many people who are over 30 years old and have entered the industry in different professions have less time, so they start reading "Psychiatry" which is so thick that it can kill people, and they are immediately persuaded to quit. It is more efficient to learn the most basic crisis intervention and boundary setting first, and supplement the corresponding knowledge points while taking on public welfare cases.

There are living examples on both sides. I know a 38-year-old sister who switched careers from a pediatric nurse. She just made up her career while doing things. She became the main parent-child counselor of the agency in 3 years, and she has never had any ethical accidents. ； But there was also a 24-year-old girl who had never studied abnormal psychology. She regarded the visitor's bipolar manic episode as "elevated mood and improvement" and stayed with her for three months. In the end, the visitor owed 200,000 for an impulsive purchase, and her family directly went to the association.

To put it bluntly, more theory is not better, nor is less theory better. It has to adapt to the type of case you are doing and your own learning pace. There is no standard answer.

What’s more pitiful than learning too much theory and learning too little is that many trainings now teach practical exercises into memorizing skills templates. I have seen something even more outrageous. There is a training course that distributes "100 All-purpose Empathy Techniques" to students. Just say it in the same way. Isn't this nonsense? It's like teaching a chef to memorize a recipe. If you can't even tell the difference between salt and sugar, you'll be asked to make a fool of yourself. It's weird if it tastes good.

Regarding how to practice, different schools have completely different approaches. Psychoanalysis-oriented training pays more attention to your ability to capture non-verbal information. When you come to visit and clench your fingers, don’t just talk. Handing you a glass of warm water may be more effective than saying 10 words of empathy. ； In humanistic training, the first step is to practice "being present", which means that you don't keep thinking about "what technology should I use", just sit there and listen calmly. ； Short-term focus solution training instead requires you to ask the client to find resources for the first consultation, and not to be immersed in emotions. No one is right or wrong, it’s just that the visits are different.

A woman who had lost her child came to see me before. When I first learned counseling, I almost blurted out "I understand your pain." Fortunately, my supervisor had reminded me not to be blindly empathic at this time. I didn't say anything at the time, so I handed her a tissue and sat there crying with her for 20 minutes. After that consultation, she told me that I was the first person who did not advise her to "be more open-minded."

Oh, by the way, there is another module that many cheap trainings do not mention at all: personal experience and ethics training. This is the core threshold for whether you can eat this bowl of rice.

This area is quite controversial. Many behaviorist-oriented counselors think that personal experience is useless. As long as my skills are in place, do I care if I have any trauma? However, most consultants working in the psychology and humanistic fields, as well as the requirements of the registration system, require at least 50 hours of personal experience before they can accept fee-based cases. I once had a colleague who was domestically abused by her father when she was a child. She had not dealt with this part of the trauma. She received a visitor who was also abused by her father. When the visitor told the details of her beating, she collapsed first and cried in front of the visitor for half an hour. In the end, the visitor comforted her. What do you think this is?

Not to mention ethics, a red line stuck in all schools, leaving no room for negotiation. You cannot have a dual relationship with the visitor, you cannot accept gifts of more than 200 yuan from the visitor, and you cannot provide consultation to acquaintances. These are the bottom lines. I met a consultant last year who received the latest iPhone as a gift and was immediately removed from the registration system. The entire industry will no longer use him. To put it bluntly, if you are almost technical, you can slowly improve it. If there is an ethical problem, you will be out of the game.

To be honest, the psychological counseling training on the market is really messy now. There are things like earning a monthly income of over 10,000 yuan after getting a certificate in 3 months, and including teaching and knowing, and distribution. They are all pitfalls for people who want to make quick money.

Psychological counseling is essentially a profession that "uses you to work." No matter how much theory you learn and how many words you practice, you will be a panicked person who can't even handle your own emotions, and you can't help others at all.

If you really want to enter this industry, don’t rush to sign up for an expensive training class. Find a reliable supervisor first and do 30 hours of public welfare case supervision, which will be more effective than signing up for 100,000-yuan classes.

After all, what can help a visitor is never the graduation certificate in your hand, but your heart that is really willing to sit down and listen to what he has to say.