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Marriage Counseling:
A marriage counselor is someone who helps married couples, as well as couples who are soon-to-be married overcome their issues and insecurities. Every couple has obstacles in their marriage or relationship due to their own insecurities.
These insecurities can be anything from suspicion of infidelity to a lack of attention or affection. Marriage counselors are available for these couples to receive help with overcoming these insecurities. It may be therapy and talking through their issues, or it could be through the use of a series of couples’ exercises.
For minor problems, therapy may be the only necessary solution. However, for the larger issues, the exercises may be more appropriate. The exercises can help to build trust within the relationship and therefore improve the marriage.
Family Counselor:
A family counselor is someone that helps families work through hard times in their lives. These hard times may or may not include all members of the family. It could be anything from a death in the family to issues at school with one of the children. Sometimes, it may even be needed for a divorce within the family.
There are several methods that are used by family counselors in order to help their patients. They may use therapy or they may also combined therapy with certain family exercises. They may even help the family to improve their current communication skills so that they can voice their feelings or opinions during tough situations.
Family counseling is an excellent tool to be put to use when there is a child being bullied, a divorce in progress, or even when a family is moving to a new city, state, or even country, and the children are unhappy with this change in their lifestyle. This can be very helpful and can make the family grow closer together and happier within their family lives.
Career Options:
When becoming a marriage or family counselor, you are given a few different options for where you want your career to take off. What I mean by that is you can work in a few different environments.
For example, you could choose to work in your own office, whether it is in a building with other counselors, doctors, other businesses, or by yourself that is completely up to you. There are also other types of businesses that would like to have a marriage and/or family counselor as an asset to their business.
Some schools may like to have a family counselor on hand to help their students work through their family issues while they are in an environment where they feel comfortable and safe. Also, some hospitals or care centers for terminal illnesses, such as cancer, may want to have a marriage and family counselor available as well so that they can sit down and talk about how they are dealing with the medical situation of their family member.
These may not be the most usual environments in which a marriage and family counselor would work in; however, your services could be very helpful and useful to these situations. Career path and location are definitely two important aspects to think about when becoming a marriage and family counselor.
Salary:
The average salary of a marriage counselor is about $42,000 and the average salary of a family counselor is about $58,000 per year. These figures will vary based on city and state.
These two career options are great for those who want to be a counselor of some sort and help people work through their problems. Whether it be marriage, family, or any other issues, counselors can be very helpful; especially marriage and family counselors.
Jessica Alan is a guidance counselor earning a masters degree in counseling to further her career.
