Strengthening Families and Relationships
Support individuals and families through life’s challenges as a marriage and family therapist with training from Hardin-Simmons University. Your career will involve face-to-face counseling, the development of treatment plans, and the facilitation of interpersonal communication. With your compassion and skills, you can help your clients build stronger, healthier relationships with their loved ones.
What to Expect
64k
$63,780 Median Annual Salary
Bright
New job opportunities are very likely in the future.
N/A
No Data Found.
What you Should Know
- Therapy and Counseling: Knowledge of principles, methods, and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of physical and mental dysfunctions, and for career counseling and guidance.
- Psychology: Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
- Customer and Personal Service: Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
- Sociology and Anthropology: Knowledge of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, human migrations, ethnicity, cultures, and their history and origins.
- English Language: Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, and rules of composition and grammar.
- Administrative: Knowledge of administrative and office procedures and systems such as word processing, managing files and records, stenography and transcription, designing forms, and workplace terminology.
- Law and Government: Knowledge of laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process.
- Philosophy and Theology: Knowledge of different philosophical systems and religions. This includes their basic principles, values, ethics, ways of thinking, customs, practices, and their impact on human culture.
- Education and Training: Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
- Computers and Electronics: Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.
- Public Safety and Security: Knowledge of relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.
- Medicine and Dentistry: Knowledge of the information and techniques needed to diagnose and treat human injuries, diseases, and deformities. This includes symptoms, treatment alternatives, drug properties and interactions, and preventive health-care measures.
- Communications and Media: Knowledge of media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods. This includes alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media.
- Telecommunications: Knowledge of transmission, broadcasting, switching, control, and operation of telecommunications systems.
- Administration and Management: Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
- History and Archeology: Knowledge of historical events and their causes, indicators, and effects on civilizations and cultures.
- Mathematics: Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.
- Transportation: Knowledge of principles and methods for moving people or goods by air, rail, sea, or road, including the relative costs and benefits.
- Sales and Marketing: Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.
- Geography: Knowledge of principles and methods for describing the features of land, sea, and air masses, including their physical characteristics, locations, interrelationships, and distribution of plant, animal, and human life.
- Biology: Knowledge of plant and animal organisms, their tissues, cells, functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
- Fine Arts: Knowledge of the theory and techniques required to compose, produce, and perform works of music, dance, visual arts, drama, and sculpture.
- Personnel and Human Resources: Knowledge of principles and procedures for personnel recruitment, selection, training, compensation and benefits, labor relations and negotiation, and personnel information systems.
- Economics and Accounting: Knowledge of economic and accounting principles and practices, the financial markets, banking, and the analysis and reporting of financial data.
- Foreign Language: Knowledge of the structure and content of a foreign (non-English) language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition and grammar, and pronunciation.
- Mechanical: Knowledge of machines and tools, including their designs, uses, repair, and maintenance.
- Production and Processing: Knowledge of raw materials, production processes, quality control, costs, and other techniques for maximizing the effective manufacture and distribution of goods.
- Chemistry: Knowledge of the chemical composition, structure, and properties of substances and of the chemical processes and transformations that they undergo. This includes uses of chemicals and their interactions, danger signs, production techniques, and disposal methods.
- Physics: Knowledge and prediction of physical principles, laws, their interrelationships, and applications to understanding fluid, material, and atmospheric dynamics, and mechanical, electrical, atomic and sub-atomic structures and processes.
- Design: Knowledge of design techniques, tools, and principles involved in production of precision technical plans, blueprints, drawings, and models.
- Food Production: Knowledge of techniques and equipment for planting, growing, and harvesting food products (both plant and animal) for consumption, including storage/handling techniques.
- Building and Construction: Knowledge of materials, methods, and the tools involved in the construction or repair of houses, buildings, or other structures such as highways and roads.
- Engineering and Technology: Knowledge of the practical application of engineering science and technology. This includes applying principles, techniques, procedures, and equipment to the design and production of various goods and services.
Programs Related to this Career
Your Day to Day
- Encourage individuals and family members to develop and use skills and strategies for confronting their problems in a constructive manner.
- Ask questions that will help clients identify their feelings and behaviors.
- Develop and implement individualized treatment plans addressing family relationship problems, destructive patterns of behavior, and other personal issues.
- Maintain case files that include activities, progress notes, evaluations, and recommendations.
- Counsel clients on concerns, such as unsatisfactory relationships, divorce and separation, child rearing, home management, or financial difficulties.
- Collect information about clients, using techniques such as testing, interviewing, discussion, or observation.
- Confer with clients to develop plans for posttreatment activities.
- Confer with other counselors, doctors, and professionals to analyze individual cases and to coordinate counseling services.
- Determine whether clients should be counseled or referred to other specialists in such fields as medicine, psychiatry, or legal aid.
- Provide instructions to clients on how to obtain help with legal, financial, and other personal issues.
- Provide public education and consultation to other professionals or groups regarding counseling services, issues, and methods.
- Follow up on results of counseling programs and clients’ adjustments to determine effectiveness of programs.
- Supervise other counselors, social service staff, and assistants.
- Gather information from doctors, schools, social workers, juvenile counselors, law enforcement personnel, and others to make recommendations to courts for resolution of child custody or visitation disputes.
- Write evaluations of parents and children for use by courts deciding divorce and custody cases, testifying in court if necessary.
- Diagnose mental and emotional disorders in clients.
Helpful Skills & Abilities
- Active Listening: Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
- Social Perceptiveness: Being aware of others’ reactions and understanding why they react as they do.
- Speaking: Talking to others to convey information effectively.
- Complex Problem Solving: Identifying complex problems and reviewing related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.
- Judgment and Decision Making: Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.
- Reading Comprehension: Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work-related documents.
- Service Orientation: Actively looking for ways to help people.
- Writing: Communicating effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience.
- Critical Thinking: Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems.
- Active Learning: Understanding the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making.
- Monitoring: Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.
- Negotiation: Bringing others together and trying to reconcile differences.
- Persuasion: Persuading others to change their minds or behavior.
- Coordination: Adjusting actions in relation to others’ actions.
- Instructing: Teaching others how to do something.
- Systems Evaluation: Identifying measures or indicators of system performance and the actions needed to improve or correct performance, relative to the goals of the system.
- Learning Strategies: Selecting and using training/instructional methods and procedures appropriate for the situation when learning or teaching new things.
- Systems Analysis: Determining how a system should work and how changes in conditions, operations, and the environment will affect outcomes.
- Time Management: Managing one’s own time and the time of others.
- Management of Personnel Resources: Motivating, developing, and directing people as they work, identifying the best people for the job.
- Operations Analysis: Analyzing needs and product requirements to create a design.
- Science: Using scientific rules and methods to solve problems.
- Mathematics: Using mathematics to solve problems.
- Operations Monitoring: Watching gauges, dials, or other indicators to make sure a machine is working properly.
- Technology Design: Generating or adapting equipment and technology to serve user needs.
- Management of Financial Resources: Determining how money will be spent to get the work done, and accounting for these expenditures.
- Management of Material Resources: Obtaining and seeing to the appropriate use of equipment, facilities, and materials needed to do certain work.
- Programming: Writing computer programs for various purposes.
- Quality Control Analysis: Conducting tests and inspections of products, services, or processes to evaluate quality or performance.
- Operation and Control: Controlling operations of equipment or systems.
- Equipment Maintenance: Performing routine maintenance on equipment and determining when and what kind of maintenance is needed.
- Equipment Selection: Determining the kind of tools and equipment needed to do a job.
- Installation: Installing equipment, machines, wiring, or programs to meet specifications.
- Repairing: Repairing machines or systems using the needed tools.
- Troubleshooting: Determining causes of operating errors and deciding what to do about it.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without “giving out” or fatiguing.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one’s side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
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