What Do Abuse Counselors Do?

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When dealing with abuse, there are many different facets and levels of abuse that one can deal with as well as all ages that are involved with abuse. Some have been living with violence their entire lives and know no other style of life. Individuals may have been threatened in the past, not to talk about it to anyone, ever. Some who were abused in the past are having problems in their daily lives with relationships, education and self esteem and may suffer from eating disorders. This is a truly complex field and has many branches and experience levels to consider.

Overview of the Abuse Counselors Profession

Abuse counselors must be great listeners, analyzers, observers, communicators, and speakers. They must have compassion for helping people as well as being well educated. They will also look for body language and emotional effects and gather information from the family members and/or other people that might be able to help. Most times, an abuse counselor will work for the government with child protective services as well as being in court for the well being of the abused.

According to the Department of Labor, the projected job growth is expected to increase by 31% with a median salary of $38,000 per year. There are many different levels of abuse such as physical victims who may of went through being beaten, burned, cut, starved, isolated, or sexually abused.

There is verbal abuse or verbal assault, which is when a victim is ridiculed, ashamed, belittled, bullied, called names, told they will never be anything, told they are no good, overweight, eat too much, ugly and so on. Sexual abuse is when an individual is touched inappropriately, molested, forced into rape and other sexual acts and can also have threats of not talking to anyone about the incidents. This will also be included with verbal abused and other types of physical abuse.

Abuse Counselors Tasks and Training

There are many people out there that are being abused in different ways and are made to think that they are the ones that are at blame. The cruelty of what some of the abused go through scars them for the rest of their lives. Some will experience flashbacks for their entire lives and the thoughts are painful; this is some of what you will be dealing with, finding treatments to alleviate ill feelings of the past.

An abuse counselor has many tasks that will build the profile of their clients and their issues on a mental level, emotional level and the physical level. This allows them to come up with a plan for treatment and whether or not a psychiatrist or other specialist along with law enforcement will need to get involved with the wellbeing of the client.

A counselor can sometimes use their own personal experience to help the clients, since some counselors have also been victims of abuse themselves. This does provide a unique capacity that allows them to relate to others on a deeper level. It takes a special skill to be an abuse victim and it’s a job that will make you feel complete.