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What Are Specialty Adds?
It is ironic, but adding specialty certification(s) to your Holistic Counseling Practice can literally save your practice!
With the new Democratic Congress, even if you sympathize with other parts of their agenda, the downside for Holistic Counselors is increasing regulation. In just the last two years, attorneys for the major establishment therapy associations have introduced hundreds of new State and Federal bills at last count, attempting to limit, regulate, audit or shut down Non Traditional Wellness Counselors.
Motives of association members vary from sincere regard for patients and fear or skepticism of natural healing, to blatant control moves by the drug industry and medical associations themselves. We have won two major defamation lawsuits against the Traditional Therapy Associations (TTA's) is the past 25 years, and have ironically garnered ACLU support for individual Wellness and Pastoral Counselors attacked by association liberals, jealous that they are less successful with their string of alphabet soup after their names, than many natural or faith based counselors. We're not knocking their education, we're saying that blowing out another's candle to make your own seem to burn brighter is self defeating.
In the past, TTA's and medical associations as well as drug companies were begrudgingly content to let Natural Healers work in limited arenas like nutrition and chronic illness, or terminal illnesses for which Western medicine has only palliative protocols, due to proven research on results. But recently, these associations have moved more aggressively into sponsoring State initiatives to heavily regulate Holistic Counselors, usually by requiring membership and credentialing by their own associations! Talk about a blatant conflict of interest, and unabashed rent seeking!
The Specialty Add solution is a potent defense for your practice. We call it ironic because it is counterintuitive-- who would have thought that adding arbitration, negotiation, mediation, credit counseling, mortgage counseling, career counseling, and pastoral counseling to holistic health and wellness counseling would protect, secure and even save practices?
This is fighting fire with fire: when they attack a Holistic Counselor for lack of traditional medical training, we counter by asking to see their credentials in finance, career counseling, mortgage law, etc., in which they practice "on the edge" all the time!
TTA's are not business types, so when confronted with credentialing in the areas of mediation, arbitration, negotiation, holistic health and wellness, finance, etc. their programs are lamentably defective in even the educational fundamentals. This quickly makes them back off, and is a powerful protection for your practice from intrusion, audit and State actions.
The additional real benefit in income, is that Specialty Adds also greatly increase the scope, depth and income from your practice. You know about the mortgage crisis, record bankruptcies, financial ruin from terrorism and natural disasters, chronic health issues that Western medicine can't cope with because they don't help the whole person, and positioning your practice in these important areas bring in many new clients while at the same time slamming the door shut in the face of new regulation.
One our our counselors was doing so much job and employment counseling, that when the State asked for credential review, her attorney demanded review of all the traditional practices in town who were doing job counseling, and focused on that aspect of her practice and credentialing! The State instantly backed down, and the publicity brought her dozens of new employment counseling contracts, including employer wellness programs. With the move to open enrollment competition, many employers are now actively seeking their OWN contacts with Alternative Medicine counselors to attract enrollments.
Click HERE to see the price differences between foundation and specialty packages-- you can either bundle with your PC certification here, or add on as you go forward. At present, there are four separate certifications available exclusively to PSU Holistic Counselors: Mortgate/Credit Counselor; Career Counselor; Negotiation/ Arbitration/ Mediator Counselor; and Pastoral Counselor. Many Holistic Counselors add all four! Our two most popular are Pastoral Counselor and Financial Counselor, although with the current economy, Career Counselor is becoming very popular and is competing with Finance for the number two most popular!
The Holistic Health and Wellness Certificate is a complete program in itself, and in this program, counselors can also add pastoral counseling as another specialty to protect and expand their practice and help clients, because the definition of Holistic Healing is helping the client physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually-- in other words, the whole person.
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