Counselors and Burn Out A huge issue that counselors are facing today is the battle against burn out in the profession. According to Bray, “Counselors, as helping professionals who listen to and support clients through some heavy and distressing issues, often on a daily basis, are at high risk for professional burnout” (2018). Because of the issues that counselors deal with on a daily basis, it is easy to take that sort of thing home with you, and stress about it, causing a burn out effect in your profession. When people deal with stressful issues, as such counselors do, it is very hard to keep yourself afloat and not fall into the negativity and feel a burn out feeling towards your profession. Sometimes it becomes a struggle for one to balance …show more content…
Therefore, it is also important for counselors to promote wellness within their personal lives also. To prevent burnout, counselors and other such professionals need to seek self-care. Self-care can prevent burnout from becoming a serious issue, causing more harm to the counselors and clients. According to Smith, “it is important to unpack our counseling experience in a health way. We do incredibly difficult work, and we need a way to empty our cups when they are overflowing” (2017). Self-care can mean different things for different people. Some may use working out as self-care, whereas others might read books. Self-care all boils down to that individual and what they enjoy doing in life. Doing thing that you love to do is a great way to distress and to prevent that burnout that is so highly dreaded in the counseling …show more content…
According to Section C, professional responsibility in the 2014 ACA Code of Ethics, it states that, “counselors engage in self-care activities to maintain an promote their own emotional, physical, mental and spiritual well-being to best meet their professional responsibilities” (American Counseling Association, 2014). Also, to note that Standard C.2.g in the ACA Code of Ethics it states that counselors should continually monitor their selves for any impairment that might affect their profession, and if they recognize the impairment, that they must seek the appropriate assistance to help cope and alleviate that impairment. In such case, burnout is a serious impairment, that might affect their work overall. People who are going through stress and issues, they sometimes do not think clearly, which would put them in another ethical dilemma, cause they are not thinking of the clients needs, they are potentially putting the client at harm, by not self-caring for themselves and not correctly dealing with their burnout. According to Meyers, “counselors also need to recognize when they have reached their limits” (2015). It is very important for professionals, such as counselors to realize that they are human too and that they also too have a limit and spectrum on