No, I’m not talking about my Thanksgiving pants. Nor am I talking about the martial art of shooting rubberbands. I’m talking, dear faithful reader, about being a counselor.
I entered the graduate program in counseling in Summer 2006, excited to have been accepted and eager for the personal growth I would experience as a student learning to facilitate personal growth in others. I’m at the midpoint now with four classes and a year-long internship remaining. This semester I’m enrolled in Practicum, which means I am a counselor to clients in the campus counseling lab. I’ve worked with clients on topics ranging from decision-making to alcohol abuse, from depression to relationship conflict — and more.
Most of the time, I feel very confident in my abilities as a counselor. I attend well, I listen well, and I empathize well. But occasionally, I question whether or not I have the stamina to do this for a living. There are times when I’m listening to a client repeat the same session over and over again and I want to leap from my angular, tautly upholstered armchair to shake some insight into them. There are other times when I’m utterly stumped, when I have no clue how to help my client feel better in that moment, let alone improve their overall functioning. There are times when I feel sad to know that we all struggle in very similar ways in life, but that we don’t embrace that universality as we go about our daily slog. And there are times when I worry that the “counselor student syndrome”, which occurs when a counseling student believes she has every disorder she encounters through her clinical work, will become a chronic rather than acute parade of maladies. So far, this semester alone, I’ve “had” cyclothymic [bipolar] disorder and been depressed, anxious, and obsessive-compulsive; thankfully, alcohol abuse and anorexia are harder sells to my conscious self.
Despite these points of reservation, which I know my classmates also harbor, I feel emboldened by the multidirectional ways in which I will grow as a counselor. It invigorates me to think that strangers will trust me with their stories, each one a cosmic masterpiece with limitless possible outcomes. Counseling is what I’m meant to do. I will bend and stretch my mind, my heart, and my repertoire of skills in ways that will make yoga masters blush. Inevitably, I will pass involuntary [and figurative] gas in the process and, expectedly, my own personal growth will hurt like a bee-atch, but it will be worth it. Scratch that — it is worth it.
2 Comments
November 9, 2007 at 4:07 am
I was told by my clinical instructor that I am in the wrong profession…not because I suck at mine (I don’t), but because I’d be an awesome counselor or social worker. I thought he was nuts, until I thought about it.
Good luck to you – it is totally worth it! I’m a little jealous, too. Now I’m in grad school and my experience so far is a lot of things…but rewarding is not one of them.
April 24, 2008 at 3:57 pm
As a fellow counselor, I can tell you laughingly, that I too, experienced many different illnesses. I do however, live and thrive with bipolar disorder…so it really isnt unheard of in a therapist.
I had many times as well in the early years, where I wanted shake someone…but we both know Erika, that people will “get it” only if and when they are able. In the meantime..you are a safe person to share with…and I am sure you have wonderful abilities.
Laurie