Are You a Counselor?

In reading a counseling skills textbook that I am currently reviewing, which is entitled 'Counseling Skills' by Traci Postings I came across many activities that to me would make good articles. In the first chapter there is an activity to see if you could be a counselor, and these are my responses to these questions. When I was a LPN and working with the geriatric patients and leading or assisting in activity groups this was when I wanted to learn how to be a counselor or at least use the modalities that counselors used for various therapies like art, music, play, etc.

Counseling skills interested me for these skills will let you get to know the ones you will be working. They can also help you to understand yourself better. In learning the counseling skills there are various modalities as mentioned earlier like art, music, play, etc that allow participants to learn about each other. Some of the skills like active listening, asking questions, and learning how to be more empathic are some of the skills that interested me at the time.

In wanting to learn counseling skills my long term goals at the time was to be a counselor or better yet a play therapist even though I worked with geriatric patients. I did learn that these patients even though they had Depression or Anxiety and most had Alzheimer's disease or Dementia they just wanted something to do that lead me to my long term goal of writing or trying to become a writer of counseling vignettes to help social work or counseling students learn their skills that will use in their practices or careers as social workers.

My plan was to get my Master's degree in Counseling, but that did not quite work out due to several factors like the place where I was working seemed to be phasing out and it seemed to do that a few months after I had to leave my position. I did continue my education and received my graduate degrees in Curriculum and instruction and Reading and literacy for I have created a homeschool course for Psychology. This is when I found out that I liked writing and sharing my knowledge of what I know. I realized that all that I have studied are all interrelated somehow in many respects from teaching to counseling to nursing.

In becoming a nurse the qualities that I possess is that I think I am a caring person who likes to listen to others and trying to be a more understanding person. We all have fears in learning new skills and doing things in the wrong way, but that is how we learn to do things the right way. This is when I began reading and learning more in fields that I have studied. I realized that I liked reading textbooks and any books really and wanted to share them, and I became a book reviewer.

Currently, I have been reviewing for several years now and this does make me happy to share what I have read and learned about all that I have accomplished so far. I wanted to be counselor and found out that was not going to be a good fit, but I liked the subject matter and I still wanted to share what I learned and just started to write here on this site known as Vocal. As soon as I complete some long over due chores there will several reviews of several textbooks that I have been reading mainly about how to become a nurse researcher that really shows how just to do research in, believe it or not, the fields that I have studied and will probably continue to study for I am a textbook reviewer of counseling, nursing, and education for Sage Corwin Publishers in Great Britain. In the end being a person who shares what I have learned brings me joy in general.

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