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    My Next Steps: Create a Counseling Career You'll Love
    My Next Steps: Create a Counseling Career You'll Love
    My Next Steps: Create a Counseling Career You'll Love
    Ebook178 pages2 hours

    My Next Steps: Create a Counseling Career You'll Love

    By Kate M Walker

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    About this ebook

    Successful leaders always have an amazing story. They spend a lifetime chasing success, dodging critical errors, and creating great businesses. The problem? An intense life can leave you exhausted, emotionally spent, and a just little bit crazy. Amazing stories start us, but good habits and discipline sustain us. It’s time to achieve balan

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKate Walker Training LLC
    Release dateOct 7, 2017
    ISBN9780578550138
    My Next Steps: Create a Counseling Career You'll Love
    Author

    Kate M Walker

    Kate Walker bio 11/18 Kate McLellan Walker Quote under photo: Successful Leaders Achieve Balance Successful leaders always have an amazing story. They spend a lifetime chasing success, dodging critical errors, and creating great businesses. The problem? An intense life can leave you exhausted, emotionally spent, and a just little bit crazy. Amazing stories start us, but good habits and discipline sustain us. It's time to achieve balance. Dr. Kate McLellan Walker Ph.D., LPC, LMFT is an experienced clinician, entrepreneur, writer, researcher, educator, and speaker. Born in Texas and raised in the Midwest, she struggled with ADD and FOMO (fear of missing out) throughout her adolescence. As soon as she could she ran to the live music capital of the world and earned her Bachelor of Music degree from The University of Texas at Austin. She used that credential to teach public school orchestras and freelance as a bass player until 1998 when she decided to pursue her MA and Ph.D. in counseling from Sam Houston State University. Her achievements and many diverse interests include doctoral advisory board member, university professor, president of the Texas Association for Counselor Education and Supervision, and licensing board liaison. An avid researcher (and still blessed with ADD), Dr. Kate harnesses her love of business, novelty, and creativity to speak, teach, and write about her experiences running her successful clinical practice AchieveBalance.org, training over thirty-seven cohorts in her ground-breaking leadership organization Kate Walker Training, and being the wife to a soldier and mom to three amazing kids. In her spare time, she still freelances as a professional bass player for singer-songwriters in the Houston area. Balancing business and family places Dr. Kate in a unique position to help other leaders achieve balance too. In her new book, My Next Steps: Create a Counseling Career You'll Love, she synthesizes interview data garnered from five successful entrepreneurs in the counseling field. The result is a step-by-step guide containing practical tools so readers can create the successful career they fell in love with, make a living, and keep their sanity.

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      Book preview

      My Next Steps - Kate M Walker

      Acknowledgements

      I am filled with humility and gratitude. When I think of all the people to thank for helping me make this book, it is hard to know where to start. To my husband David, thank you for loving me and walking with me on this adventure, even though you are on the other side of the world right now. I am grateful to Dawn Mitchell for holding my hand and getting this book out of my head; to my kids who are the reason I strive to achieve balance and make a living; and to Amber Haygood for holding down the fort and keeping the practice going while my I was trying to meet deadlines and birth this book. I am indebted to Sheila Gerth and Tammy Gross; two women who never met, yet over the decades and countless cups of coffee helped me make sense of my turmoil and turn it into stories.

      I am grateful to friends who loved and nurtured me, and pushed me to stop working and get a workout, a pedicure, or a margarita. You know who you are. Thank you to the experts whose stories inspired me to write this book and to my mentors whose inspiration lit the fire under me and drove me to accomplish all that I have. A special thank you goes to my mentor Dr. Judy DeTrude. With a simple invitation to join you in private practice you changed my life. I will never be able to repay you for all you taught me about counseling, about being a professional, a supervisor, and a person of excellence. I still tell every class I teach, that if I don’t know the answer I will call you. I’m still thinking about making those What would Judy do? bracelets. If I can be half the educator you are, I will consider my life well lived.

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Preface

      Chapter 1: Do It Right the First Time

      Chapter 2: Meet the Experts

      Chapter 3: Your Story is Your Strength

      Chapter 4: Mitigating Mistakes

      Chapter 5: The Therapeutic Use of Money

      Chapter 6: Make Time

      Chapter 7: Achieve Balance

      Chapter 8: Private Practice Primer

      Final Word: The Lasting Benefits of Being a Counselor

      About the Author

      Resources

      Preface

      Save the World with Better Therapy

      (and save yourself while you’re at it)

      My story narrates how one therapist set out to save her son, and ended up becoming an asset to her community, her clients, her family, herself, and if we believe the butterfly effect, the world. She did it by choosing to become a professional counselor and help hurting individuals and families, teach others, and give away her time.

      If you are reading this book you probably have a story too. If you are a fully licensed counselor…congratulations! If not, that’s okay; this book is for you too. You probably have a passion to counsel others, and the principles in this book can help you turn that passion into a career. If I do my job in equipping and motivating my readers, you will finish this book and possess concrete tools to create a career that will look eerily like the one you fell in love with.

      What is my ulterior motive?

      The world needs more therapists:

      those passionate people willing

      to sit with hurting people

      and create healing.

      Introduction

      My Story

      He said thank you mom for fixing my clouded broken mind but excuse me if I seem a little rude.

      While I was missing my childhood, my brother and my prime,

      you enjoyed the convenience of my solitude.

      – Edwin McCain

      M

      y son and I had a long discussion about this book. The song lyrics at the top of this page describe my pain and guilt as I dove into beginning my doctoral program and starting a business while my son was in jail or rehab. I saw my son's teenage years as key to my back-story. Diagnosed with various 'disorders,' arrested for impulse control issues, and eventually sent to rehab, my son didn't really have what you'd call an idyllic adolescence. In the first edition of this book I told that story.

      What I forgot, and this wise young man remembered, is my story is really our story. While I was confused and sad about his choices and diagnoses, he was struggling with medications that left him confused about his body and distrustful of his mind. I struggled with the death of my mother but at the same time he was struggling with the fact his biological father wouldn't have contact with him. We both reeled emotionally from the deployment of my husband, his stepfather, to Iraq.

      The long and short of it is no one, not him, not me, not his sisters, not my husband, got out of this without a story.

      So I'm going to tell you my story, and how that story affected my journey becoming a counselor. Maybe someday he'll tell you his.

      Entering Counseling

      In 1998, I started my master’s degree in counseling. We had just received the first (of many) notes home from my son’s Kindergarten teacher; I was flustered, defeated, and taking it all very personally. I had been thinking about counseling as a career change and my son’s issues gave me an added push to give it a try. In my first marriage, his biological dad had abused me. I had long thought that entering the counseling field would allow me to help other women trapped in violent relationships.

      Since my son was having issues, I thought I could add to my skill set the ability to teach parents how to control their out-of-control kiddos. Yes, 1998 was an idealistic year for me.

      By 2000, I had my master’s degree in counseling, but I wasn’t quite ready to quit my day job. That was probably a good thing. Soon after 9-11, my husband mobilized with his Army reserve unit for almost twelve months, I had our third child, and I was working full time as an orchestra teacher. As a joke, I called myself the counseling orchestra teacher although I hadn’t practiced a minute since finishing my degree.

      By 2004, my husband was back home, and I was ready to start accruing licensing hours. However, I put off my decision to start practicing by doing what so many of us do—stay with what’s safe and secure. I kept my teaching job and went back to school. As I think back, we were probably in between escapades with my son. Sam Houston State University was offering a fabulous deal so they could get their new PhD program off the ground (I really wanted that trip to Mexico they were offering) and it was only a couple of nights a week. To top it off, my husband was home from his mobilization so he could help with the kids and I could keep teaching. In other words, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

      As life would have it, two months into my program my husband was mobilized to Iraq. Six months in, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My son, well, you know what was happening with my son. So, I did what any logical person would do: I quit my teaching job and went to school full-time (you’re welcome Sallie Mae). Six reconstruction surgeries, three years, and one dissertation later, I was ready to call myself doctor and open www.achievebalance.org, my cash-only counseling practice in The Woodlands, Texas.

      Has it been smooth sailing since then? Heck no. But today my husband is mobilized with the Army in Poland. My beautiful son is free, supporting himself, and working. My middle daughter is at the University of North Texas and is a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ community and women’s rights. My third child is fifteen and playing lots and lots of volleyball. The point is, and this is the takeaway from this book by the way, I didn’t quit. I may have slowed down and I might have been driven by ego rather than passion; but I didn’t quit. I have discovered that when a life’s purpose has been deposited in you, the only way you can fail is if you quit. Now, almost fifteen years later, I am so glad I didn’t.

      My desire is that this book will keep you from procrastinating, making excuses, being distracted or simply quitting.

      If you have passion to help and counsel others, and you are looking for a way to direct it,

      this book is for you.

      If you have lost your passion to help others heal and are looking for tools to re-ignite it,

      this book is for you.

      If you have fallen in love with a career focused on helping and healing others,

      this book is for you.

      If you need to overcome lack of confidence and fear of failing to actualize and do what you love,

      this book is for you!

      In the following pages, I will…

      Highlight for you the practical, doable steps to become a counselor.

      Introduce you to experts and explain exactly how they succeeded so you don’t have to recreate the wheel.

      Give you scripts, tools, and resources that will empower you to overcome fear, be able to make a sustainable income, and avoid burn-out.

      Equip you to get the FUD out (as one counselor I know calls it). Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt is FUD. What you need is Confidence, Assurance, and Faith to implement your dream and actualize your passion.

      Provide you with self-talk and motivational truths that will birth hope and enthusiasm for your dream to counsel, help, and heal hurting people.

      In a nutshell, I will help you create the career you fell in love with. By the end of "My Next Steps: Create a Counseling Career You’ll Love," you will:

      By the end of My Next Steps you’ll also understand why your gifts make you too important to lose to things like going broke, getting discouraged, burning out, or getting fired. Your story and your passion got you started; now learn the next steps to some good habits to help you create a counseling career you’ll love.

      Chapter 1

      Do It Right the First Time

      Your Success is Important

      I

      t’s common knowledge that deteriorating mental health confronts all of us as an increasing social problem. What you may not know is that the challenges surrounding how we effectively treat and help those with deteriorating mental health have been building for years. Let’s explore some background history to better understand today’s troublesome issues.

      If you have seen the classic movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you have become aware of the fabled mental institution or insane asylum. This fictionalized portrayal is probably tame compared to what actually happened in those warehouses packed with individuals suffering from mental health disorders. Patients in institutions were abused, experimented on, raped, lobotomized, and robbed of their dignity. With advances in psychiatric medicine and evidence-based treatments, experts began to question the efficacy of mental institutions and posited that they might be, in fact, making the patients worse.

      The Community Mental Health Act, signed into law by President John F. Kennedy October 31, 1963, shifted resources away from large institutions to smaller community-based treatment centers. Financial assistance in the form of grants were intended to help states construct Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC), designed to provide, at a minimum, five essential services:

      Consultation

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