How to Become an Abuse Counselor

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A Special Type of Commitment

It’s not an especially cheerful job. In many ways, it can be one of the saddest jobs you’ll ever experience; picking up the broken pieces of lives shattered by self-abuse or by the abuses of others. Your job may involve not only your client, but your client’s family, teaching them interactions that will strengthen them as a unit, creating a supportive net for the victim. You may discover family trends with abusive roots going back through several generations.

You may have to help your client find safe-housing under a confidentiality clause that will not allow you to tell anybody, no matter how close the relation or how much they plead with you, where the client is, or any other information concerning your client. Your clients may sometimes become belligerent, angry, forceful or rebellious. They can also become withdrawn, fearful or highly emotional.

The end goal of the domestic violence or substance abuse counselor is to identify the causes of the cycles of abuse and to treat them at the source. The job demands patience, integrity and a calm nature. The abuse counselor may have to make enormously difficult ethical decisions involving the client, family members and even legal entities. The best candidates for the job are those who understand or have experienced abusive relationships or who have knowledge of substance abuse.

Abuse Counselor Preparations

We do not have the facilities to house all the self-abuse and abuse victims in need of treatment or shelter, but as fast as facilities are built, they are filled with a staff of men and women dedicated to ending abuse. The most common entry level is a bachelor’s or master’s degree in psychology or sociology, although there are training programs within many women’s shelters, substance abuse centers and charitable organizations for those who would like to dedicate themselves to abuse counseling.

Candidates for abuse counseling should prepare themselves with a lot of field work either before, during or after taking formal college courses. Some of the fieldwork may involve going with an abuse victim to a court hearing, attending meetings with legislators for the development of a hotline, additional funding or the building of new facilities or volunteering assistance with a charitable organization.

If you are studying to become a domestic violence counselor, your training may involve visiting the home where a tragic domestic violence incident occurred and sitting in attendance with a trained counselor while he or she consoles the victim’s family.

You must accept the possibility that the spouses of abuse victims will be hostile toward you and may even try to threaten you. Your greatest weapon will be in communicating clearly yet firmly, without aggression or fear.

The Social Good of Abuse Counseling

Abuse is not always easily apparent. It can be hiding in the medicine cabinet, in the extra chocolate donuts, or in unusual punishments that leave no marks on the victim’s body, but puncture a thousand holes in the psyche. The harms of verbal abuse have become increasingly more apparent as the stinging words of everyday language are type in the Internet. With a number of youthful suicides attributed to social networking, there is a growing concern over cyber-bullying.

Our definitions of abuse have broadened as we’ve observed the effects in their generational sequences and individual cycles. As we gain more understanding of what constitutes abuse, our ability to treat it at the source strengthens. Abuse is like a disease. Treat the symptoms without identifying the culprit, and it keeps coming back. Its infection spreads. Treat the causes, break the patterns and safeguard the victims of abuse and we begin to build a gentler, kinder society.