Cengage



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>> The topic here is the counselor as a person and a professional and this is an extremely important topic because the way I view counseling, it's not just your ability to apply skills, but it is the person that you are, and your ability to establish a collaborative working relationship with your clients. So, my hope is that as you read this chapter, and think about these topics, you'll make an extra effort to think how does this fit for me? First, let me say something about the counselor as a therapeutic person, there are a whole list of characteristics, and I'm just going to cover a few of them. I think it's extremely important who you are as a person, as I mentioned, that you don't get lost in what you're going to say next, that you stay with the client, and that you are yourself. I find a lot of beginning students worry a lot about what am I going to say, how am I going to say it, and when a client says thus and so, what will I say in response, and they lose themselves. So the word here is be yourself and be authentic and be real. I think our clients will pick that up if we're playing a role, or get lost in professionalism, I think it's going to be difficult for a client to make a connection with us. You know, I think in another way, modeling is extremely important, that we need to be alive, and vital, and engaged, and able to make connections with our clients, so that's a very vital characteristic. Another topic that I think is related to you as a person is getting personal therapy if you're going to be a therapist. There are arguments on both sides, some say we should not mandate and require that students experience their own person therapy. Others say it's a basic part of training and it ought to be required. My personal belief is that if you experience your own personal counseling and personal therapy and get involved in your program, your therapy program, that it will be one of the most engaging ways to learn how to be a therapist. You won't learn by just reading a book and just by listening lectures or listening to this lecture, I think when you're sitting in the other chair as a client, and you're actually experiencing what am I going to talk about, do I want to open this subject, do I want to make this change, when you're actually going through the process of a client, I think it will help you become a lot more respectful and appreciative of what your clients have to go through and what they're experiencing. Now, I don't think going through your own personal therapy implies that there is something wrong with you, or that you need curing, or that you have a mental illness, or a disorder, but I just think it's a very valuable tool to help each of us look at what are some of our vulnerabilities, what are some of our issues, maybe from our childhood that haven't been addressed, or fully recognized, or explored, or worked through. And once we at least identify some of the personal issues that we might be struggling with, we realize that we're not a finished product. I don't think we ever get to a stage where we can say, well, I'm cured, I have no more personal problems. I think being this kind of work, where you're listening to clients, particularly when your clients in the state of crises, it activates our own personal issues, so hopefully you'll welcome the idea of getting some kind of therapeutic experience for yourself. Another area that deals with you as a person is your values, and, you know, your value system is something that is very closely related to your professional work, and I would like to say that it's not your job as a counselor to teach your values to your clients, and certainly not to impose your values upon the people you work with, but to be respectful of differences. Your clients may have a very different world view, a different set of values, a different set of moral and religious beliefs. I don't think our job as counselors is to straighten out clients, or to educate them about proper values, and sometimes counselors in training get into difficulty because they see it as their job, their task to really somehow teach proper values and quotes to their clients, and there have been some court cases around this general topic. I think we need to see too, that our values relate a great to how we actually work as a counselor. For example, there are certain values in counseling that are an inevitable part of the counseling process, we expect our clients, for example, to self disclose, to take risks to talk about something that's personally meaningful, those are values in a way. We're expecting clients to become, you know, self aware, to take risks, all of those are values that I think have something to do with the therapy process. So that's an important dimension that we'll want to talk with about clients. Another area of the counselor as person and professional, and I hope you can see that who you are as a person, and who you are as a professional are very closely related, can't separate those two. You can't be one person and a different kind of professional. If we're two different people when we're a counselor, versus when we're ourselves, not in the role of a counselor, I think we're in trouble. I think basically when we're wearing a counseling hat and a counseling professional, we ought to become ourselves, and we have a different job of course. But another area of the counselor's person is becoming multiculturally competent, and that's not something we're born with. I think we all have a culture, and it's important that we realize what our own biases and attitudes are, or prejudices we picked up along the way, and at least become aware of that. If we're not aware of it, we can't monitor it, and we can't change those areas. So self awareness is a critical piece in becoming a diversity competent counselor. Another is that know something about the client's culture, now this does not mean that we have to know everything about every client's culture we work with, that is impossible. But at least we can be open to our clients and say, what might I need to know about you to work effectively and to help you? So, at least be receptive to our clients, what they need, what they want, and how their culture may be effecting them. A third area -- first is self awareness, then knowledge, and the third is skills. It's not enough just to be self aware and have knowledge about ourselves and our clients, but we need to have skills of how to intervene with culturally diverse client groups. We need to realize that we can't use the same techniques or skills for all clients. We have to be willing to tailor our skills and our techniques for the needs of each of our clients. Realize that becoming a culturally competent counselor is not something that we ever really arrive at fully, sort of like becoming a person, becoming a culturally competent counselor is an ongoing process that takes a lot of time, a lot of supervision, openness on our part to reflect on what we're doing with our clients, an openness to listening to feedback from them about how things are going. Last topic that I want to address with this chapter is issues that counselors typically face, and I'll just pick a few of them. One of them is anxiety, most counselors, especially when they're beginning, have anxiety, I know I certainly did when I began. I was anxious about will the client show up? And then I was anxious, what if the client shows up? Now what will I say? Now what will I do? Will I know enough when a client raises a problem? When I first began counseling, I used to think that I had to have all the answers and fix that client and solve that client's problems, preferably in one hour, and it didn't happen. So, anxiety is natural, and it's not something that needs to be numbed, I think what we need to do is learn how to manage our anxiety, and realize that it's going to take time for us to become effective. Another area that a lot of us struggle with in the beginning is perfectionism, I know a lot of my students worry, will I get it right, what if I make a mistake, oh my, will I damage a client for life, and sometimes students are so overly worried about being perfect that they get in their own way, so my hope for you is that you give yourself some room to be less than perfect, that mistakes aren't failures, and making mistakes, if we're open to feedback, and if we're in supervision and willing to talk about what think is a mistake is a way to hone our skills. Another area that gives a lot of problem for a lot of us when we begin, and even when we're seasoned counselors is how do we work with difficult clients? You know, and difficult clients pose a difficulty for us because they test our skills and our competence, and sometimes we can have a client that doesn't want much, they were sent there, they're mandated, they show up, and they're not really very invested, and some of you might take that very personally, and think, oh my, this means that I'm not effective as a counselor, and maybe I shouldn't be cut out for this work because I can't motivate this client. Well, it's a two way process, your client needs to get motivated and it's not just your job to do all the work. Another area that's related to this is not losing yourself in your clients. While I hope you can become empathic and have compassion and care about your clients, I'm also hoping that you develop good boundaries, and that you don't take your clients home psychologically and worry about them all night and worry more about them than they're concerned about themselves because to do that, you'll lose some of your own identity. And a very important part of this discussion, I think, is staying alive and vital, both as a counselor, and as a person. As a person and professional, if we're not alive and taking care of ourselves, I don't think we're going to be able to do a good job. Self care is not just a luxury. Self care, I think, is an ethical mandate, and unfortunately, I think a lot of counselors sometimes don't put themselves in their own schedule book, they don't exercise as they should, or as they'd even like, they don't always eat properly, they don't get enough sleep, they don't have enough fun, they're not taking care of themselves in a holistic way, and I suppose, I'm hoping very much that you will see how if you're not taking of yourself, it's going to be reflective of your work. And so, you owe it to yourself and to your clients to become healthy in all respects, wellness is not something that we can just say, okay, I've arrived at it, I think we have to work at it, you know, we have to work at it, make it a commitment, and it doesn't have to be drudgery, but I think we need to think, how can I find a balance in my life, how can I make time for whatever it's going to take to stay alive and not just exist, not just muddle through. And realize that person and professional are intertwined and that, that's an ongoing challenge, as long as you're in this work, this will be something that we need to attend to.

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