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AAMFT coordinates education standards, coordinates training standards.
Without the work of AAMFT,
we would be a scattered, fragmented set of professionals
without a unifying standardization.
They had two programs, they had a Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program,
which is what licensed professional counselors typically pursue
when they're looking to become a licensed professional counselor.
They had a marriage and family therapy program.
And I was like, what in the world is this marriage and family therapy thing,
I want to know more about this.
I learned more about the idea that it's not just focused on marriage and couples
or families, which I really care about.
But it's, it's a certain perspective of the way that we look at people
and the lives that they live
and how to approach therapy from a systemic perspective.
this idea that we all live and work and function and communicate within a larger system.
We don't live in bubbles. We're not individuals.
And so change can be very well effected through affecting the system that somebody lives in.
And oftentimes, traditional therapy doesn't take that into consideration.
And so it's this continued feedback cycle in therapy where people change,
and they change their environment, their system, and that then affects them.
And they they work towards additional change.
And that can sound like maybe therapy never ends.
And that's not true, we do have therapeutic goals, treatment goals that we work towards.
You get to know your clients, you get to participate in their lives,
you get to be a part of their big moments and their hard moments
and their joy and their pain.
And you get to bear witness to that as they grow and as they heal.
That, to me, is particularly rewarding.
The world needs therapists, because there's a lot of pain.
And there are a lot of people that can survive,
but they don't know how to help other people survive and thrive.
we need people who not only can help people learn to express empathy, have empathy.
But we need people who will model that for our communities.