How to become a psychotherapist, in 6 steps

Becoming a psychotherapist is not easy, but having clear steps to follow helps.

The profession of psychotherapist is a job option that attracts thousands of people year after year, being the career of Psychology one of the ones that receives more requests for admission in most Spanish-speaking countries.

However, as all people who begin to train in this field discover sooner or later, the road to professionalization in psychology is a long one, the road to professionalization in psychotherapy is not one of the easiest. is not one of the easiest. Knowing how to train in the best possible way is crucial to bring to our experience the differential factor necessary to stand out, to have clients and to be a psychotherapist both in theory and in practice.

How to become a psychotherapist: toward a viable career path.

We will now review several basic tips on how to become a psychotherapistchoosing well where to invest your time and efforts so that they bear fruit effectively.

1. Choose a good university center

This must be clear: to become a psychotherapist, one 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 oneself in this field 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 to find out about their work methodology. to check that it is based on scientifically validated paradigms, and ensure that they offer both training in the traditional format of lectures and lecture classes, and through hands-on learning with training materials, laboratories and real workplaces or simulations thereof. The option of internships with 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. choose what type of content to focus on.

In the case of psychotherapy, it is also possible to specialize further and direct your training efforts towards more specific topics: eating disorders, anxiety disorders, etc. You don't have to limit yourself to just one of these fields; ideally, you should 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 contents taught at the university offers a very limited scope of learning, especially taking into account that new developments in psychology appear very often.. That is why you also need to learn on your own and keep up to date with the latest research in your areas of specialization of interest.

That means reading scientific journal articles, especially, and although popular science books are also interesting and useful for discovering new ideas, they should not be your only source of information.

4. Keep learning through courses and Masters

The Masters are the type of training programs to specialize par excellence, so they allow you to learn new contents but, above all, to apply them in very similar contexts to the ones you will find in your practice, apply them in contexts very similar to the ones you will find in the office.. For this reason, it is important to take advantage of this type of experience as a prelude to what you will do on your own in your practice once you have become fully professionalized.

In other training programs, the institutions have collaborating centers where clients can go, and although they are not a bad option, they lack the same standards of control. In any case, it is essential to be able to apply what you have learned so that the day does not come when you offer your first consultation 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 having frequent contact with other students or professionals in the field of psychotherapy, contributes greatly to our progress. It is a way of coming across doubts that had never occurred to us before and trying to solve them.It is a way of finding out about the state of the profession, both in its contents and in its more circumstantial aspects (regulatory and labor market issues) and, why not, of forging interesting friendships.

6. Keep in mind the code of ethics

In the profession of psychotherapist you not only have to know how to do it, you also have to know what is right to do and what is not. That is why, be informed about all the details related to the code of ethics. This will, among other things, help you to clarify the ethical implications of your work and to keep in mind how what you do affects other professionals, your clients and patients, and the people around them.