8 JAN - FEB 2026IN MY OPINIONBy Reylla Santos, Mental Health and Drug and Alcohol Counselor, Millennium Counseling Center Journey to Becoming a Specialized CounselorMy journey to be in this field started even before I knew I was on that journey. As many of us, I spent my life caring for and witnessing an uncle struggling with addiction during his whole life. I was keenly aware of how much his addiction affected not only him but the whole family. Initially, I avoided working with addictions because I thought that no one could change them--he died from complications of chronic use and I remember him crying and saying that he wanted to stop using. And as many in general population, I did not understand why he couldn't just stop. When I started practicing in the field, I started working with people struggling with substances use disorders and, to my surprise at that time, they transformed their lives and successfully sustained recovery. That's when I experience the most joyful feeling I had ever felt in my profession. Seeing someone transform their lives completely gave me hope that others could do it as well and gave me the utmost respect for people in recovery. I started to see that this population would come back to my office, give positive feedback, and be grateful for walking with them during their journey of recovery. That's when I realized that I was good at that and then I decided to specialize in it. Fast-forward, Millennium Counseling specializes in an individualized treatment approach to addiction, one that caters to the needs of the individual and respects individual pathways to recovery. And that aligned with my views on recovery. We often see treatment approaches that, due to funding and manualized treatments, offer a cookie-cutter type of treatment without integrating the individual necessities of the client into the process. Although there are many benefits for it depending on their stage of recovery, they benefit from having agency into their own treatment.Balancing Personalization and Counseling ConsistencyI do not know if a consistent counseling approach exists, as we tailor it to the clients' needs and each person interacts EMPATHY, TRANSFORMATION,AND CONNECTION IN COUNSELING
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