Hello all. It's been a while. I hope everyone is alright.

So I'm in between a rock and a hard place right now. Long story short, I went to school for a mental health counseling degree but I need a job that will give me the 3000 hours to get the license. Every mental health counseling job I'm seeing wants the license and a couple of years of experience. But how am I going to get the license if no one will hire me and give me a chance? I've been having this issue for 2 years now. I don't want to let my degree go to waste but this is beginning to feel like a lost cause. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. I've wanted to be a therapist for so long because I genuinely enjoy helping people but it wasn't my true passion. My true passion is something else that I'm trying to pursue and I've already gotten my foot in the door with that. I wanted to get my mental health counseling license as a backup while I try to fully get into my passionate field but I didn't think it would be this hard. I don't have the money to go back to school to get a degree that will be in an easier field where there might be more jobs.

My current job sucks and I've been here for 2 years now. It's not mentally healthy for me. I've been told that I have to tolerate people's racism and bigotry and I'm a person of color so that hit me really hard. And it's just an unhealthy office environment, in general. I work on a crisis hotline as a peer and we get perverted callers, bigoted callers, rude callers, and we just have to take it because the center cares more about numbers. We're micromanaged like no tomorrow and the supervisors don't really know what they're doing. When we need help for a crisis situation, different clinical supervisors tell us to do different things because they weren't trained properly and when we make mistakes it's on us, not the supervisors who gave us the wrong instructions. The peer supervisor actually knows what they're doing and is good but even he is annoyed with the way things are run at this center.

I know some people on here might know that situation but I just wanted to give a recap. I'm sorry if I'm being annoying by talking about the same thing but I honestly don't know what to do. People tell you to go to school, get your degree, and you'll get a job right off the bat and you're young and naive so you believe them. Then when you get out into the real world, you realize how wrong you were. I'm paying for that now.

I'm not the type of person to give up which is why I don't want to quit my current job. I fight and I fight but I think I just have to change course at this point. I still live with my family and my mom said I can quit and she'll help me out because she doesn't like how I have to deal with so many things at this job, especially the perverted callers. I'm also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and some of the calls can be triggering. I want to help people but not at the expense of my mental health and that's why I'm rethinking going into the mental health field. I don't think it's for me. However, I'm sticking with this job because I need the money and I have bills to pay and this job actually pays really well. =( My mom will legit help me out with anything I ask but I want to be independent because I don't want to be a burden. She already has stress as it is. I can't add on more to that.

My ideal job would be to work in an LGBTQIA+ organization because I would like a place where I can be myself and I'm really passionate about helping the community but there aren't any job openings that I qualify for in any of the LGBTQIA+ organizations in my area.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to find a job...or just any advice in general? I've tried employment agencies, job fairs, applying online. I'm still quite young but I just want to get my two feet on the ground.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate it.