The profession of psychotherapist is a job option that attracts thousands of people year after year, with the Psychology career being one of those that receive the most applications for admission in most Spanish-speaking countries.
However, as all people who begin training in this field discover sooner or later, the path to professionalization in psychotherapy It is not one of the simplest. Knowing how to train in the best possible way is crucial to providing our experience with the differentiating factor necessary to stand out, have clients and be a psychotherapist both in theory and in practice.
How to Become a Psychotherapist: Towards a Viable Professional Career
Below we will review several basic tips about how to be a psychotherapist knowing how to choose well where to invest the time and efforts so that they bear fruit effectively.
1. Choose a good university center
This must be clear: to be a psychotherapist, you must obtain a university degree in Psychology, and in many countries it is not even enough to take this step. Training in Psychology offers the theoretical and practical basis necessary to know how to orient yourself in this area of knowledge and applied science, although to specialize it will be necessary to continue studying.
How to choose a good university center? It is very important that you inform yourself about their work methodology to verify that it is based on scientifically validated paradigms, and ensure that they offer both training in the traditional format of lectures and master classes, and through practical learning with training materials, laboratories and real workplaces or simulations of this. The option of doing internships in external organizations is also a requirement that you should consider mandatory.
2. Choose your area of specialization
Psychology is a very broad field, so sooner or later you will have to choose what type of content to focus on
In the case of psychotherapy, it is also possible to specialize more and direct training efforts towards more specific topics: eating disorders, anxiety disorders, etc. You don’t have to limit yourself to just one of these areas; The ideal is to choose three or four. This way, you will have expert knowledge but at the same time you will not have such a degree of specialization that it will be difficult for you to find a job.
3. Learn on your own
Limiting yourself to passively internalizing the content taught at the university offers a very limited scope of learning, especially considering that In Psychology, new developments appear very often That is why it is necessary that you also learn on your own and keep up to date with the latest research in your specialized areas of interest.
That means reading articles from scientific journals, especially, and although popular science books are also interesting and useful for discovering new ideas, they should not be your only source of information.
Masters are the type of training programs to specialize par excellence, so they allow you to learn new content but, above all, apply them in contexts very similar to those you will find in consultation Therefore, it is important to take advantage of this type of experience as a prelude to what you will do alone in your consultation when you have become fully professional.
In other training programs, institutions have collaborating centers where clients can go, and although they are not a bad option, they lack the same control standards. In any case, it is essential to be able to apply what you have learned so that the day you offer the first consultation does not arrive and you do not know what to do.
5. Surround yourself with people who know
This is an idea that often goes unnoticed, but the difference between training alone and doing so in frequent contact with other students or professionals in the field of psychotherapy contributes a lot to our progress. It is a way to come across doubts that had never occurred to us and try to resolve them to learn about the state of the profession both in its contents and in its more circumstantial aspects (regulation and labor market issues) and, why not, forge interesting friendships.
6. Keep the code of ethics in mind
In the profession of psychotherapist, you not only have to know how to do it, you also have to know what is correct to do and what is not. That’s why, Find out all the details related to the code of ethics of psychotherapy, which among other things will help you clear up doubts about the ethical implications of your work and keep in mind how what you do affects other professionals, your clients and patients, and the people around you.
Do you want to train in the practice of psychotherapy?
The Master in Integrative Psychotherapy of Mensalus It is a very good way to learn from professionals who dedicate most of their time to patient care. This is a training program carried out by the team of one of the main psychotherapeutic care centers in Barcelona; It lasts one year, is aimed at graduates in psychology and can be carried out in both face-to-face and online or mixed modes (a mix between online and face-to-face).
This Master’s Degree is a University Degree from the Nebrija University of Madrid, it is aimed at professionals who want to specialize in the Clinical Practice of Psychotherapy with an integrative theoretical positioning and its start date is September 26.
The Master’s methodology is eminently practical, and it involves viewing real therapies, and students carry out practices with real cases, acting as therapists with their own patients.
