View Single Post
 
Old Dec 09, 2016, 10:18 PM
guilloche guilloche is offline
Magnate
 
Member Since: Jun 2014
Location: US
Posts: 2,734
Sorry, I'm a little late to this thread. I'm not a therapist, so I don't know that I have good, accurate information to provide, but I had a couple thoughts.

I'm surprised to see that this is frowned on. If you haven't started school to be a therapist yet, you're obviously not in a position to be a "professional" - I'd think that doing peer counseling (assuming that's what you're looking at?) would be a great way to start getting some experience, learning the skills, and showing that you're interested in the field.

I don't understand why professionals are telling you not to do that, and I don't know if I'm missing something important?

A friend's daughter is in school to become a therapist, and my friend mentioned that his daughter is doing a lot of volunteer work (and I thought peer counseling too, as part of that), but I don't know the details.

Are you on reddit, by chance? There's a forum over there for therapists to post professional questions. This seems like it might fit in with the type of questions that they get from students and people considering the field. They don't allow questions from clients (i.e. you can't post and ask for a diagnosis, or ask about your own treatment) - but asking about whether peer counseling jobs would hurt your chances of getting into the field should be fair game.

Here's the link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/psychotherapy/

Congratulations on your graduation (yay!) and welcome to psych central!