Information on Counseling in the Military

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Counseling in the military doesn’t constantly deal with terrifying war stories and people who are heavily spiritually scarred. Usually, their routine working day consists of a simple session and a conversation. There is always the more rough side of the job when you have to help your client overcome tensions within family and fix the behavioral problems within the individual. Regardless, if we are talking about soldiers, participating in modern warfare or a ceremonial guard, a military consultant needs to help his or her clients cope with their job.

Path to the Job

There are plenty of positions for counseling in the military, but experience and an officially acknowledged skill set will always be required. Some institutions will surely offer training courses, but the more experience you have, the easier it will be for you to get the position.

Getting a Master’s Degree in Counseling takes about two or three years and it is what most counselors do before taking up working positions, since it allows them to become licensed later on. Doctorate degrees take about five years to complete. Most hospitals and military institutions offer internships, so once the degree is completed with the right push, you will get the chance to prove and teach yourself.

Remember, there is a difference between counseling and clinical psychology. The counseling type stresses on daily problems, while the clinical practice focuses on mental disorders.

The Clients

It is not essential that the client is the one that bears the problem. Frequently, it is the other family members of the military person that can be problematic. Perhaps a man’s wife is constantly disappointed; perhaps a child has been influenced by the absence of his or her father. As a consultant, you will have to meet both the client and problematic person and all of you together under your direction in order to resolve the problem.

Of course, there is the opposite situation when you have to focus on a client, returning from the battlefield and attempting to get used to his or her ordinary family lifestyle again. Depending on the person’s condition, you will find it either easy or difficult. Regardless, if you are entirely successful or not, when assisting the soldier in getting used to his or her civilian life, you will always have to prepare him or her and their family for the possibility of them going out in the warzone again, if there is in fact such a chance.

Approaches

With counseling in the military, the toughest situation in which you can find a client is distress caused by the loss of a loved one during service. Usually, such cases will require more than one session and the suggestion of a psychologist will most likely be necessary. There are countless different cases of personal problems and fears and disruptions of ordinary lifestyle, but the origin is the same: the army. As a counselor, you will be directing your clients to become used to their reality and accepting and overcoming their past traumas through their present experiences.

If you have a warranty, you can actually process longer therapies with clients such as exposure-based and cognitive-behavioral ones. These are usually essential with serious disorders.