Guidance for Potential Mental Health Students

Kathy Knochel

If there is someone that is interested in the mental health field and is thinking this sounds like a really good career option, I would certainly say go for it. I think that you will find that in any career there are challenges and there can be hard days, but this can also be a very rewarding career field.

So, I would strongly encourage someone that is interested and is wondering to just let themselves ask some questions about it and step in and maybe if you’re in college, take it semester by semester and just get a feel for what it’s like. I’m talking primarily from the social work field because that’s where my experience is.

But it’s important that as you go into a program like that that you just have a good sense of who you are and that you can be grounded in your beliefs and your value system. Just as part of this field, you learn a lot about different lifestyle choices and all of that. And it’s all a matter of you’re learning this information, and you’re taking it in, and then you are left to evaluate. So, where do I stand with this? And so, it’s really good to just make sure that you’re grounded in your belief system, and that you just have good accountability. You find a mentor in the field, you connect with them, you talk with them about different things that you learned and see what it’s like outside of the college classroom and what it’s like in the field and just that you have a good layer of support.

I say to some people it would be great to work myself out of a job, but I think just because of where things are and how life happens, that’s something that probably will never happen. So, this is always an area where there will be need and there will be people that are just looking for someone to support them and walk alongside of them.

Ted Witzig

I would really encourage people to have a mentor or mentors to walk through this with. One of the greatest blessings that I had along the way was people at church, my family, and even professionally that helped mentor me through this and it helped me in the discernment process. Is this a good field for me? Is this the right place for me? Because it’s not the right field for everybody. This is a field that can chew people up and leave them shipwrecked on the side of the road. It’s not a friendly field for some people, so it’s not wise to go into it without knowing what your bearings are and having a faith that can guide you through and people that you can bounce things off of.

But I think having that is one of the greatest things, because as things would come up, I would be able to talk with this mentor over here or that mentor over there, and they would guide me to different information, or I’d be able to talk through my questions. Well, how do I make sense of this? And that ended up having the effect of strengthening my faith. What was helpful was the fact that as there were challenges along the way, to be able to talk those through, to be able to study, and to figure out what I believed and why I believed it. That ended up being very helpful.

And that’s one of the things that I would encourage. One of the things that I notice about people considering the field is they oftentimes are concerned about how much schooling there is and they’ll think, oh it just seems like such a long time to get to a master’s degree.

Most people going into this field will stop after a master’s degree. So that’s about six years of college. And, you could have a wonderful career at that place. I would just say to people who are looking ahead and going, wow, that seems like a long time. I would just say, if this is a good field, a good match for you, I want you to remember how long grade school seemed to last.

Okay. When you think of yourself today, does grade school seem long or short? And, it feels like that after the fact. So, my point isn’t that it’s easy. The point isn’t that everybody should do it, it’s just that, people would say to me, oh, wow, you’re going to be 30 years old when you get out of school for the first time, and all these things.

But I was also able to say, I’m 30 years old and I’m going to be able to do what it is I want to do and minister in the way that I want to minister. And I think the other thing that happened along the way is I realized that my time in school was not just a holding pattern. God had work for me to do there.

And my wife, Donna, was instrumental in this. And she said to me one day, she said, Ted, I’m not going to live like our life begins when you get out of school. This is where we are now, and God has things for us to do here and now. And you know what? That helped me. Because then, all the way through school as I interacted with professors and other students and did my practicums and those kinds of things, this is where God has us right now and this is where he desires for us to be faithful and that really helped.

Craig Stickling

The advice I would have for someone going into the mental health field is to lower your expectations. We go in with a mindset that every scenario is going to be the perfect solution and I’ll have the right answer and I’ll create this plan or this awareness and right therapy and just, oh, it’ll just solve every issue that was going on. And to lower that expectation to come in with a heart to recognize that as Christians, as followers of Christ, we get to be ambassadors and we get to represent our Savior and that you’re representing your Savior, even with each kid, each person, each parent that you talk to. Every interaction we get to be a representative of that and to keep it.

I need to make sure I keep my vertical alignment healthy so I’m able to do a better job with my horizontal work and recognizing that. I’ve also learned to recognize that I don’t always get to drive the combine. I’m not always the harvester. I don’t always get to see the end product. But that a lot of times with people in places, that sometimes we’re just a part of their journey.

We’re a part of that. I’m a rest stop on this interstate and there’s just a long stretch and they’ve just pulled over for a short time. They just need some fuel. They just need some energy. They just need to confirm their map. And sometimes I’m just a stop on someone’s interstate. And to be okay with that.

Sometimes I’m a seed planter. Hey, look at this, what do we got, where are we at? And here’s some different things to consider. And sometimes we just plant seeds and someone else gets to water and harvest as the Word says, and to be able to recognize that.

Ron Messner

So, I think one of the things is people consider whether to go into counseling or psychotherapy. I think there’s several things to think about. And one of those is to be careful that you aren’t going into it to get well. And that’s a mistake that’s often made. I think in any graduate program, you can pretty quickly spot people who have their own distress levels or issues and are thinking somehow this is going to cure them.

The fact is people who’ve been through some issues make good counselors, but they need to not be doing it to cure themselves. They need to be doing it because they have a heart for it, because of what they went through. When somebody chooses to be a psychotherapist, in particular do that in a Christian setting, people can define that as somehow more noble, not unlike my work at Life Points.

People are like, well, that’s really special, or especially you’re called to that. And I think we have to be careful of that. We are called to align with God in the profession we do. And there needs to be people who are producers, people who are engineers and manufacturers and doctors and whatever they are.

That’s what makes the totality of society. So those of us who have the privilege of working more personally with people, I would call it a privilege. And I would say it gives us the opportunity to notice God in a different way or call him to people’s attention. And that’s a privilege to be able to do that, not unlike the privilege of preaching.

But it doesn’t make someone special or different. It’s just an alignment of what skills we’re given and how we address those skills. So, I would say to anybody, if your gifts align with counseling and you have an interest in doing that, to consider that a calling to explore. But it doesn’t make us closer to God or better than in our spiritual relationship, but it also would be an error to say that it’s not a privilege.

Of course, it is. When you get to work with somebody whose marriage is better, more honorable, more God honoring when you’re done. Of course, that feels good. I mean, it’s a great privilege. And I think back, I’m not going to use anything that’s identifiable. It’s somebody working through depression and understand that getting in a good place 35 years ago, I still know them. I see how they function as a result of learning that. I don’t even know what my part in it was, but anytime I see them, it’s heartwarming to know that, and not just good because emotionally they’re processing better, but they see God differently because of that.

Brian Sutter

I hope at least some of you who are watching this maybe would be thinking, is this field for me, or would have a degree of interest in pursuing being a people helper as a counselor. And in that, I would just want you to know that that journey can look so different from individual to individual. If you have a heart to learn and grow, if you have a heart to help people, we need people in the helping field who love Jesus and love other people.

There’s a, there’s a great deal of need and if the Lord’s calling you to it, we would certainly be excited about that.