Counseling and Counselor Education
Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor
Private Practice

As a child, Dale Sheffield ‘99PHD encountered some traumatic experiences from his parents, which led to deep insecurities. So he sought counseling. Through those sessions, he experienced emotional growth by working through the insecurities and becoming a more self-confident individual. That process was exciting. And those experiences inspired him to want to help others experience similar growth, which led him to pursue a counseling career.

Since graduating from the NC State College of Education, Sheffield has worked in private practice, providing counseling services to adults, adolescents, children, parents, couples and families, and also providing counselor supervision. He just published a self-help book on parenting, titled Affirmative Parenting, which has been a goal of his for many years.

Twenty-one years later, Sheffield still enjoys helping others develop through the counseling experience.

I decided to attend NC State because of the variety of learning opportunities in research, clinical mental health counseling and teaching. The counselor education program provided some clinical settings to help prepare me for private practice.

Dale Sheffield

His Story

“I decided to attend NC State because of the variety of learning opportunities in research, clinical mental health counseling and teaching. The counselor education program provided some clinical settings to help prepare me for private practice. These settings included counseling students at the NC State University Counseling and Testing Center on campus and an internship at mental health centers in Vance, Franklin, Granville and Warren counties.

Some areas of research that interest me include parenting and the parent-child relationship, and counselor impairment including substance abuse and burnout. An important experience that I had at NC State was a publication in the Journal of Humanistic Counseling about counselor impairment, which gave rise to my dissertation topic of counselor burnout, a form of counselor impairment.”