Why is Self-Care Important for Counselors?

In counseling, wellness and work performance are highly related. Any deviation from self-care, leading to a deterioration in personal wellness, is directly reflected in the output of a counseling career. In most cases, counselors are aware of the importance of self-care and indicators of lack of wellness. However, individuals tend to ignore the signs of inadequate self-care, with the belief that they are strong enough to press on with counseling schedules. It is, therefore, vital to emphasize the need for routine self-care to prevent and manage burnout before counselors reach a critical stage where the quality of their services is severely hampered. Through regular self-care, counselors are assured to avert the consequences of burnout and become better counselors, as discussed in this paper. 

Importance of Self-care 

According to Walz and Bleuer (2017), counselors absorb a significant amount of emotional pain. Most of their clients are persons who have gone through physical and psychological experiences that are traumatizing and painful. While listening to clients’ narrations, counselors put themselves in the clients’ situation to understand the magnitude of the problem and offer a counseling session that would best resolve the client's psychological issues. In other words, the counselor offloads a client's emotions by absorbing them. Absorbing and holding of client's mental issues requires self-care, which guarantees reduced risk of burnout, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue. The American Counseling Association (ACA) warns that prolonged counseling services may lead to counselor impairment, which can only be prevented through self-care. ACA defines impairment as the point at which a counselor's issues reach a stage of impacting the ability to offer quality professional services. Self-care is also essential for counselors if they seek to remain within the ACA guidelines. Counselors who are impaired are advised by the ACA to limit, suspend, or refrain from offering services until they are assessed and passed fit to provide their services (American Counseling Association, n.d.). The importance of self-care is, therefore, felt as it protects counselors from nonconformity scenarios that are a threat to their profession. 

Consequences of Lack of Self-care 

Failure to preserve adequate and routine time for self-care leads to the development of various psychological disorders associated with a lack of wellness among counselors. The common psychological effects include burnout, vicarious traumatization, impairment, and compassion fatigue. Burnout, as described by Gerard Lawson, is characterized by a slow degradation in the ability to show empathy (Shallcross, 2011). The counseling process predominantly relies on the ability to express empathy, thus enabling the formation of a bond between counselors and their clients. However, the accumulation of stress with minimal efforts towards self-care leads to a feeling of helplessness, which is also an indicator of burnout. Vicarious traumatization, unlike burnout, may occur after a single traumatizing experience with a client. Characteristics of vicarious trauma are similar to those associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. To avert this consequence, integration of self-care within counseling sessions is recommended. Lastly is compassion fatigue that arises when counselors are exposed to negative client outcomes. Negative client outcomes are either those in which a counselor is unable to offer help or offers services that do not help clients, ending with the most dreaded scenarios. These outcomes lead to depression and emotional withdrawal if self-care is not incorporated. 

How does self-care help you become a better counselor? 

Walz and Bleuer (2017) summarize the benefits of self-care into four ways through which counselors become better in rendering their services. The first is therapeutic value in the creation process, which is vital in helping a counselor offer creative solutions to clients. The increased artistic expression facilitates emotional and spiritual understanding of clients, which are elusive when self-care is ignored. The second benefit is the increase in the level of self-awareness. Self-care increases self-awareness, promoting expressive arts and more in-depth insight while offering psychological solutions. The creativity of using expressive arts increases a counselor’s ability to understand clients’ issues and interpret their reactions. This helps counselors develop new ways of resolving issues and also makes one adaptive to unexpected reactions. The third is the improved ability to externalize a problem. Self-care makes counselors attain an innate ability to establish a distance between them and their clients’ issues. The distance protects counselors from psychological issues and also fosters an objective discussion and exploration to formulate the most viable solutions. Lastly, self-care enables the counselor to contain the client's problem. The ability to contain emotions promotes quick healing after absorbing painful experiences in counseling sessions. 

References 

American Counseling Association. (n.d.).  Ethical & professional standards .  https://www.counseling.org/knowledge-center/ethics 

Shallcross, L. (2011, January 17). Taking care of yourself as a counselor.  Counseling Today .  https://ct.counseling.org/2011/01/taking-care-of-yourself-as-a-counselor/ 

Walz, G. L., & Bleuer, J. C. (2017).  Creative counselor self-care . American Counseling Association.  https://www.counseling.org/docs/default-source/vistas/creative-counselor-self-care.pdf?sfvrsn=ccc24a2c_4