Counselors Are Human Too
Counselors are human too. So dang human. Ridiculously human. Perfectly imperfectly messily human.
That said: being a human and a counselor is hard.
The world is a tough place to exist right now. There is a global pandemic that has taken the lives of 1.4 million people (as of 10:30a on November, 24th, 2020). It has taken our jobs, our incomes—our ability to safely see family for treasured holidays. Shit, the idea of it has pitted us against each other in ways that feel political and “us versus them”. Quarantining and practicing social distance alone has put stress on parents, on partners, on teachers—on everyone. The harm of COVID-19 can’t really be understated.
Alongside the pandemic, we still have things like ice storms that leave us without power—potential tornadoes on the forecast for today.
We still have our own basic “normal” ups and downs. Like, say, pregnancy and everything that comes with that.
It’s a lot. The world is a lot right now.
During all of this I have seen an incredible push for counseling. Everywhere I look on social media are messages of: seek a therapist. Start counseling. Don’t manage all these hard things on your own.
It is an incredible shift—one I am so happy to witness. One that I completely co-sign, “yes! Find a counselor! We are here to help!”
. . . Until every now and then (okay, a lot more now than then) when the weight of being that counselor hits.
Because I am human too. I am also feeling the weight of the world. I am dealing with power outages and morning sickness (yay, pregnancy!) and burn out and instability.
And I am also dealing with the guilt of dealing with that. Because it doesn’t feel okay to say, “I am too sick to see clients today.” It doesn’t feel okay to say, “I can’t hold anyone else’s pain today.” It feels like abandonment and irresponsibility to reschedule clients on days when I myself am having a harder time dealing with the world. It feels like failure when I sit with a client, virtually—which sucks too—and say, “I hear that this is so hard. I’ll hold that with you. I wish I had an answer—I just don’t.”
In our training as clinicians, we are trained to take care of ourselves first so that we can care for clients. We are trained that our sessions with clients are not about us—we need to figure out a way to manage our own stuff so that it doesn’t get in the way of the work. These lessons are both necessary and true. And also really hard to do. At times, these lessons can feel like, “I’m supposed to have my stuff figured out—and I don’t.” Which can send me and other clinicians I’ve spoken with down yet another spiral of despair and that only adds to the list of personal thoughts we have to manage to make space for therapy.
I have taken a lot of time off work lately. I have, on days when it has all been too much, or when I’ve been too sick, taken time away so that I can self-care and come back ready and able to hold the “tough” with other people. I have cried to my own network of therapist friends about how insufficient I feel. About how much I wish I had the answers. About my questions of if therapy is even the career I want with the world the way it is. And then about my guilt that I am shaming myself for having hard things on my plate and being human.
I am doing what I need to do to be okay. That’s just hard—extra hard lately—and I think we need to acknowledge that.
The theory of counseling that I primarily operate from is Relational Cultural Therapy (RCT). As RCT practitioners we believe that humans are driven towards real, authentic, growth fostering connection. We believe that connection exists in the counseling relationship as well.
Part of connection is vulnerability. Is imperfection. As I deal with how hard it is to be human now—and how hard it is to be human and a counselor—I am hoping this struggle can be used to connect wholely with my clients. For us to see each other and to live out the phrase, for both of us, that “it is okay to not be okay.”
Counselors are human too. And I think that’s a good thing. I know I would rather have a counselor who is imperfect than someone who was always put together with all the “right” answers—because how would I relate to that?
I don’t know. I don’t have a clean way to wrap this up. I just wanted to say: counselors are human too. If you are that human counselor and struggling with that balance, you are not alone. If you are the client seeing your counselor be human, I hope it brings you closer rather than away.
For me, I’m just going to spend my day being human—and trying to be okay with that.
