1. Introduction to the Counseling Profession
Chapter 5
Self-Care and Self-Growth:
A Professional Responsibility

2. Chapter Topics Counselor Wellness and Impairment
Holistic Approach to Wellness
Cognitive, Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual Wellness
Challenges to Counselor Wellness

3. Introduction Many counselors find that maintaining a positive balance
“Beyond ethical and competent practice, counselors are charged with fostering personal development. Personal development includes attention to self awareness, self care, and personal growth.”
Many counselors find that maintaining a positive balance
between personal development and professional standards
can be challenging.
Sadly, this seems to be grounded in the fact that many
counselors tend to invest much more time and energy in
taking care of others than in taking care of self.

4. Counselor Wellness and Impairment
“Counseling work can be demanding, isolating, sometimes devalued, require attention to ethics and asks that we remain empathically attuned to clients’ stories, which may have a powerful impact on us. We give of ourselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and spiritually and at what cost?”
Mental and physical health are essential to maintaining
competence as much or more than knowledge and skills.
Wellness is not simply the absence of illness, but rather an
outcome of consistently acknowledging and resolving life
challenges throughout the life span.

5. Counselor Wellness and Impairment
“Wellness is a result of living life with purpose and achieving one’s potential whereas being impaired means being unable to attain one’s potential or to perform to the best of one’s ability.”
Therapeutic Impairment
Therapeutic impairment occurs when there is a significant negative
impact on a counselor’s professional functioning which compromises
client care or poses the potential for harm to the client. Impairment may
be due to:
Substance abuse or chemical dependency
Mental illness
Personal crisis (traumatic events or vicarious trauma, burnout, life crisis)
Physical illness or debilitation

6. Counselor Wellness and Impairment
Therapeutic Impairment
Counselors who are impaired are distinguished from stressed or
distressed counselors who are experiencing significant stressors, but
whose work is not significantly impacted. Similarly, it is assumed that the
impaired counselor has at some point had a sufficient level of clinical
competence, which has become diminished as described above.
All counselors fall somewhere on this continuum between well and
impaired.

7. Holistic Approach to Wellness
“Archer, Probert, and Gage (1987) stated that wellness is ‘the process and state of a quest for maximum human functioning that involves the body, mind and spirit’ (p. 311).”
Wellness includes professional proficiency and personal growth, which is
reached through cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual well being.
Each of us is a system made up of many parts. If any one of those parts
is not working adequately, all of the parts suffer.

8. Holistic Approach to Wellness
“Necessary preservation of your time and energy requires a cognitive component of self-talk, which serves as your internal Global Positioning System (GPS).”
Cognitive Wellness
Strategies for maintaining cognitive wellness includes:
Monitoring Negative Self-talk
Setting Limits
Maintaining Boundaries
Engaging in Meditation
Engaging in Effective Time
Management
Maintaining an Optimistic Attitude
Maintaining Financial Wellness

9. Holistic Approach to Wellness
“Emotional wellness can also be called mental health. In the most basic sense, it refers to your ability to handle emotions in a constructive way in order to enable you to maintain a positive emotional state.”
Emotional Wellness
Strategies for maintaining emotional wellness includes:
Maintaining a Positive Self-Image
and Self-Esteem
Striving for Emotional Stability
Developing a Support Network
Maintaining Satisfying
Relationships
Engaging in Personal Counseling
Utilizing Relaxation Techniques

10. Holistic Approach to Wellness
“Physical wellness is the active and continuous effort to maintain the optimum level of physical activity and focuses on nutrition, as well as self-care and maintaining healthy lifestyle choices…”
Physical Wellness
Strategies for maintaining emotional wellness includes:
Maintaining a Healthy Diet
Engaging in Routine Health Checkups
Maintaining Emotional Health
Maintaining a Healthy Level of
Exercise
Practicing Yoga

11. Holistic Approach to Wellness
“Spirituality is typically represented by a broad perspective that reflects the need for transcendence and connectedness, while religion is a view which incorporates the tenets of specific faith traditions. It has been suggested that spirituality is “what individuals find sacred in their lives, what is most important to them at the essence of their being.”
Spiritual Wellness
Strategies for maintaining emotional wellness includes:
Search for Your Own Meaning and
Purpose in Life
Understand Your Own Beliefs
Develop an Individualized Belief
System
Understand Your Own Biases
Toward Spirituality and Religion

12. Challenges to Counselor Wellness
“Counselors have a responsibility to refrain from causing hurt, strive to help others, and pursue professional excellence. The susceptibility to impairment in their professional lives that can undermine their therapeutic efficacy includes the crisis of counselor impairment, which is often a result of secondary trauma, occupational stress , and burnout.”
Burnout
Burnout has been defined as “physical and emotional exhaustion,
involving the development of negative self-concept, negative job
attitudes, and loss of concern and feelings for clients.”
Burnout is an “occupational hazard that not only affects the counselor,
but also could contribute to a diminished ability to act in a manner that
promotes the well being of others.”

13. Challenges to Counselor Wellness
“The concept of vicarious trauma means that hearing the details of the traumatic experiences of your clients may affect you on a personal level. For example, it can impact your perspective on the world.”
Vicarious Trauma
Changes in interpersonal relationships are also common in counselors
suffering from vicarious trauma.
This could mean that you become withdrawn within the relationships in
your personal life, but it could also mean that you are no longer capable
of meaningful therapeutic connection with your clients.

14. Challenges to Counselor Wellness
“Another area that may affect counselor wellness is work related issues such as the counselors’ job satisfaction. Mental health counselors report that when there is confusion about their role or really large caseloads, this has a negative impact .”
Work Environment
There are things that can help counselors function effectively and
maintain a positive attitude about their work. These behaviors are knows
as career-sustaining behaviors (CSBs).
These behaviors include “maintaining a balance between professional
and personal lives, maintaining objectivity about clients, reflecting on
positive experiences, participating in continuing education and avoiding
undue responsibility for clients’ problems.”