Karla Saldana

A Creative, talented, passionate, and caring counselor with 6 years of experience working in the mental health field.
With valuable experience in providing counseling services to different populations such as immigrant children and ages of 10-17 years old. I have also worked with adults ages ranging from 20-60 years old. Adaptability and listening skills have been a major key when speaking to clients dealing with difficulties of their daily lives. Proficient in problem solving potential obstacles in short times frames to assist clients.
Living in a predominately Hispanic populated area for most of my life, my viewpoints on
family have also been influenced. I’ve noticed that there is a specific importance to assisting
parents and other family members and living even close by to them as a son or daughter grows
into an adult and takes on more responsibility and different roles. To me, I don’t necessarily
believe it is imperative to live near to them in geographical terms, but I do think it is very
important to make sure they are living comfortably and are well taken care of. If this means
living near to them because of financial constraints, then I would completely advocate for such
action to be taken. Seeing as we as a nation are getting older, the need for heightened awareness of elderly issues is impending, if not already present.
Values are another facet that makes up a part of who I am. One specific value that I have
is that I believe in forgiveness. I feel like forgiveness undertakes that an individual can change. I
think this coincides with the profession of counseling because of the foundation that mental
health professionals are able to assist with someone to help them make positive changes in their
life. With this kind of mentality, the capacity for looking for the possibility of someone taking
the necessary steps to resolve issues in their life is much easier to obtain. I find that it allows a
template for recovery in a kind of redemptive process.
Another value that I possess is compassion. This is something that is crucial for someone
with the interest of being a professional in mental health. It is what I would consider being the
crux of counseling. The necessity of a counselor having compassion is essential in delivering the
care and concern for someone with any number of issues related to mental health. I noticed that I had a deep level of compassion for humans as a younger person, as if I could feel their pain or
discomfort through their expressive emotions and language. At the time, I didn’t really
understand why I felt like I was different in that I had more interest in someone’s welfare or
well-being, but as I grew older, I concluded that this was a part of my personality that
was engrained in me, even as a child.
Humility is another value that I hold in high regards. I know there is so much that I
don’t know in relation to the field of counseling, but I also know there are people with a wealth
of knowledge and wisdom in certain positions that are willing to assist and further my education
so that I will have the competency to practice mental health within counseling. Humility can be
helpful because it doesn’t have an assuming nature about itself. There may be certain things I
know about a particular area in counseling, but it doesn’t mean that I’ve mastered it, or that I
don’t need to continue updating my knowledge and information as the times change and as
research is completed because that is part of being an effective counselor, the continuation of
inquiring about newly found, valuable research, that supports counseling in positive ways.
Humility can really keep somebody grounded and also help with the avoidance of adverse
behavior.
There are several reasons counseling is a vital profession today. One reason is because it
provides needed mental health services to society. Another is because of the care and concern
that counselors are to exhibit. This is an ideology that I believe is sorely missing in society.
Counseling is something that also incorporates components of different fields such as
psychology, sociology, and biology. With the mixture of other fields’ knowledge, it increases the
understanding of how people behave and interact as well as why they do so. Another major
reason for its importance is because it reaches to people of all ages and races. It is not
discriminatory.
There are a multitude of factors that influence how a person changes. Experiences that
are considered significant often help a person change. Especially if there is special meaning that
the person extracts from the experience. If someone wants to change their habits, it can take them weeks, months, and sometimes even years to do so. They might take small steps towards
adjusting their lives and be able to find results without much outside help. In other cases,
individuals will seek professional help, such as counselors to assist with the changes they want to see made in their lives. It is important to know that even if positive changes are made in a
person’s life, there is still the possibility of relapse to consider.
I’ve been interested in private practice as a setting to do counseling. I like the idea of
having my own workplace, hours, and schedule. The independence of working without certain
potential restrictions is also alluring. I would like to work with all types of populations, from
children to the elderly, minorities, disabled individuals, and those who are oppressed. Some
specific issues I am interested in counseling are: alcoholism and substance abuse, violence,
bullying, depression, crisis intervention, and geriatric and aging issues to name a few.
I believe I have some emotional intelligence which I feel is something very essential. The
perceiving, reasoning, understanding, and managing of emotions are what I think I have a basic,
innate comprehension of. Listening and giving feedback are also skills that I would say I have
obtained over the years. Paraphrasing is another skill I’ve honed over the last few years. These
skills are ones that I can still improve on during my educational endeavors.
I hope to further develop my experience by working for this company as I have a lot to offer in this exciting opportunity.