SkepticDoesNotMeanHater writes:
Robert, you stated in a previous post you work as a counselor/therapist, what is your degree/certification/license and area of study/expertise? Marriage? Youth? Behavioral? Psychoanalysis? Something different?
I have no degree or certification in counseling, therapy or any such thing. But in California as in most states in the US, you do not need such a credential to be a therapist/counselor. Literally anyone can hang up their shingle and call themselves “counselor” and accept money to talk to folks about their problems, try to help them out and give them any advice they think is appropriate. I do not make much money doing this. Most I ever made was $300 in a month. I charge between $20-40/hour and get it pretty reliably. Most clients say I do a great job. I have eight paying clients at the moment.
I only work with anxiety disorders and paraphilias, and even in anxiety disorders, I mostly focus on OCD. Even within OCD, I mostly focus on Pure O obsessives. I know this illness up and down, inside and out, north to south, east to west, and every which way from Sunday. I know it better than most therapists. I have been reading about it and how to treat it for decades. Better than that, I have it myself! Clients are amazed and say, “It’s like you can look inside my brain and you know exactly how I am thinking.”
Peer counseling is a good thing, and it’s growing. Lot of folks find it pretty helpful. These people are better off working with me than with their current therapist who doesn’t understand the illness.
I work a little bit with paraphilias, but I am not as good at that.
I am now an expert at sexual orientation and am often asked to determine if someone is homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual, and I can determine that very well – better in fact, than most therapists.
I am also an expert at diagnosing pedophilia and telling it apart from misleading things that look like it but are not true fixated pedophilia.
I am often asked to determine, “Am I a pedophile or am I not one?” I am getting very good at this, and I am better than most therapists now. And yes, I have worked with two fixated pedophiles. Neither was offending, so I was able to work with them. I probably work better with non-offending pedophiles than a lot of therapists because I don’t treat them like shit like so many clinicians do.
I have also worked with fetishists, voyeurs, sadists and people with urolagnia (piss freaks), including folks who were breaking the law.
I did couples therapy with one couple where the woman was concerned that husband was homosexual or bisexual because he had some interest in sex with men. I figured out his sexual orientation very fast (pure heterosexual), then I tried to explain what I thought was going on with the guy, but couples therapy is very weird and exhausting, and I am not good at it.
Other than that, I do not work much with other stuff. I have had depressives, but I really do not know how to deal with them, and I want to throw up my hands. Suicidals baffle me and seem untreatable. I cannot work with Borderline Personality Disorders at all, had one disastrous client and never want another one. I don’t see how any clinician can work with someone so impossible. I see a lot of low self-esteem but am baffled how to deal with it, and it seems intractable.
I just tell people straight up what I am good at and if they have stuff going on that I am not good at, I just tell them.
I am not allowed to give out legal DSM diagnoses, but I can give an opinion on diagnosis. If someone has a good dx in my opinion but has never been formally given a DSM dx, I tell them to go to a clinician and get one. I send clinicians and psychiatrists tons of business – they should appreciate me.
It’s all perfectly legal in California as long as you do not falsely advertise yourself. For instance, I cannot say I am a clinical psychologist, psychiatrist, LCSW or MSW. If I give myself one of those labels, it’s against the law. I tell clients I am a peer counselor rather than a therapist because it sounds less dicky and pretentious.
People usually see me for a couple of hours and then graduate on to a credentialed clinician, psychiatrist, social worker or psychiatrist. Like I said, I give these guys mountains of business.
If you lack a credential, you are just not going to get much business. Most people will pass and go for a credentialed clinician instead.
