Marriage and Family Therapy Essay

The purpose of this paper is to review my professional identity as a Marriage and Family Therapist and to reflect on my developing beliefs within my selection of the counseling profession. My professional identity is beginning to be developed throughout my education with Liberty University. I will address the Marriage and Family Therapist professional counselor role and how this position differs from social workers, clinical psychologists, and professional counselors. By reviewing the differences in counseling positions, I will be able to express the differences from my previous experiences with pastoral counseling, and outline what my

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the counseling profession and its ability to work on cases in multidisciplinary teams. A variety of scholarly journal articles were taken into account in order to gain insight into the field of counseling and some of its specializations. For this paper, the focus was, aside from general counseling, on marriage and family therapy as well as addiction counseling.

This paper will discuss developing beliefs and identity regarding marriage and family therapy. Over one’s life many beliefs are learned and become apart of who they are. These beliefs may be religious or just what they fell are right and wrong. These are the characteristics that will help or hinder them when it comes to being an effective counselor. Marriage and family therapist use psychotherapy to treat mental, emotional and interpersonal problems in the context of close relationships. Spiritual and or religious beliefs can also be incorporated into treatment. As a professional one must be aware not to impose personal beliefs into counseling.

therapy aims to improve family relations, and the family is encouraged to become a type of

A PAPER SUBMITTED TO DR. JAMES D. GIBSON FULFILLMENT OF REQUIREMENTS FOR CO 5740 INTRODUCTION TO MARRIAGE AND FAMILY COUNSELING

The MFT form my understanding can play many roles during divorce and custody proceeding such as divorce mediation, negotiation, collaboration, even in the litigation process as being an expert witness. A therapist can serve as an expert child custody evaluator if that therapist have receive specialized training that relate to that particular role (). When a therapist is counseling marriage couples, there is a possibility that the therapist may become drawn into the arena of divorce litigation. Also, it may bring on custody litigation if the couple have children, especially if the marriage couple are soon to-be-ex-spouses ().

Without a doubt, my interest in Marital and Family therapy comes from my childhood relational experiences. Growing up in a small community within Los Angeles, mainly impacted by poverty, and gang violence, made it difficult to find healthy role models in life. My youth consisted of routinely witnessing violence in my community and at home. Thus, I decided early that I wanted to help individuals, families, and the community heal from the effects of the trauma that violence and systemic dysfunction produces. My hope is to one day provide help and resources to women, children, and families who had been

At Marriage and Family Therapeutic Restorations, an agency focused on couples and family therapy, I work as a marriage and family therapist (MFT). My job description entails understanding a family’s patterns of behavior, how these patterns influence individual members of the family, and how the relationships between family members help the family function as a whole (About marriage and family therapists, n.d.).Aa a marriage and family therapist, I would be required to understand how to treat a wide range of serious physical and psychological clinical problems, including depression, marital problems, anxiety, parent and child conflict, eating disorders, and substance abuse (About marriage and family therapists, n.d.).

Reflection on their histories demonstrate cautious optimism for the future of MFT Each gives guidance on how the field should stay focused and on where it could mature. I enter my journey in the marriage and family therapy profession with the benefit of the wisdom of these pioneers who have honed what MFT and family systems means. I am encouraged that the field is actively seeking to grow and adapt to the political, ideological and practical trials predicted for the future. I am cognizant of the need for respect of history and willingness to extend beyond current theories with deliberation and cohesion of the profession. As I embark on my education as a student of marriage and family therapy, I acknowledge a kindred excitement with the authors as they have shared in their

As a couples and family counselor, I would choose to use CBT as my main approach. One area that I could see myself working as a counselor would be therapy for couples. Ripley and Worthington (2014) discuss an example where a counselor used CBT with a couple experiencing distress in their relationship. Spirituality can be one form of distress in a relationship. I may find myself counseling a couple who come from different spiritual faiths who cannot find any common ground. They may be arguing and failing to communicate on how religion or spirituality plays a role in each of their lives as well as the life that they share. Ripley and Worthington (2014) state that CBT can be helpful as an intervention method when discussing ways to communicate

In addition, each profession value and respect diverse families. According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy website Ethical Standard 1.1 Non- Discrimination states, “Marriage and family therapists provide professional assistance to persons without discrimination on the basis of race, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, gender, health status, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or relationship status” (www.aamft.org). Some of the core values of AAMFT

Understanding who I am is critical for me to improve myself and have better cognitive balance that would help me to provide better therapeutic relationship with my future couples clients. However, I have come a long way in both my professional and personal life to get where I am now. It is vital that any student studying couples therapy integrate the morals generally accepted by the society. I developed a set of principles and manners in most of my life, which I subconsciously inherited from my culture. Though my culture has some different perspective of being couple, I have tried to be acculturated in order to understand and recognize the differences of what I have learned and those are new to me.

Marriage and Family Therapists (MFT) relies on a variety of concepts that are applied to the effective performance of their duties. Many of these concepts are so prevalent that they may be viewed as social norms unbeknownst to their users. Fallacious thinking can be very deceiving because they have the probability of sounding like truth, since they are used so frequently. A useful definition of a logical fallacy is the substitution of facts which are distorted in an attempt to persuade (Bennett, 2013). Logical fallacies are concepts that apply to the MFT field and there are a plethora of categories within these notions, four of which are equivocation, faulty comparison, hasty generalization and non sequitur.

A Brief Overview of the October Meeting Hosted by the Austin Association for Marriage and Family Therapy

The above article is effective to my future practice as a Family Therapist since I truly believe that premarital counseling helps individuals to get prepared for a new phase in their lives. After reading the article, I was capable to comprehend how crucial is to create effective programs that work aligned to the client’s preferences. My line of thinking and passion is to develop a premarital counseling program that is affordable, fast, convenient and