Counselor Wellness
Thought for the Week
"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out." -- Barbara Johnson
IPDA/ NY Office of the NeATTC
Addiction Professional Wellness Web Community
IPDA and the NeATTC were established to provide resources to those who have chosen the noble profession to prevent and treat addiction. Recent studies including the Annapolis Coalition’s - An Action Plan for Behavioral Health Workforce Development, the OASAS Report – The Addictions Profession: A Workforce in Crisis and IPDA’s Practice Relevant Professional Development for the Frontline Addictions Practitioner indicate how important counselor wellness resources are in assuring that our professionals remain healthy and supported while carrying out their demanding, but life saving work. In an effort to fill this need, IPDA and the NeATTC have created this page exclusively for the addiction professionals to find information related to wellness self-management strategies as they follow their vocation to initiate health and healing for their clients.
Puspita Sen, the NeATTC Information Specialist at IPDA will oversee these pages and share her research, support and resources. Ms. Sen’s experiences as a LMHC and CASAC have motivated her to develop this much needed resource. Please be sure to share your feedback and let us know what other resources you would like from these pages!
Dear Colleagues,
Assessment, treatment, relapse, and recovery—all addiction professionals are familiar with these words because we deal with the disease of addiction every day in our professional life. Everyday we find our profession challenging, emotionally taxing, and energy consuming. While focusing on supporting and motivating our clients to achieve recovery, addiction professionals sometimes overlook our own sense of well-being. We often experience these feelings in silent exasperation.
The goal of our counselor wellness page is to help you:
- Feel more connected by becoming part of the addiction professional web community where empathy, understanding and knowledge are shared and easily accessible.
- Innovative strategies to deal with stress due to the nature of the addiction – topics will include client retention, paper-work, time management issues and more.
- Learn new skills and develop new knowledge to nurture your mind, body, and spirit. You will get tips for simple exercise, stress and time management, low-cost nutritious diets, self-soothing activities, inspirational stories of perseverance, and supportive and open exchange of ideas.
- Find the information that is personally and professionally relevant through our website, through discourse with your colleagues, and through other links.
We welcome you to the Addiction Professional Wellness Web Community to achieve a balanced state of mind, a healthier body, and a satisfying professional and personal life. Wellness is something that you can practice one day at a time. Please, join us to create a vibrant addiction professional web community to share your experience, expertise, strengths, struggles, and hope so that you can continue to make a real difference to your client’s life while make a rewarding and continuous self-healing experience for yourself.
Puspita
Weekly Counselor Wellness Management Information
Hope is a great counseling and wellness Self Managment skill
Psychiatrist Irvin Yalom claimed that one of the curative factors in counseling is "Instillation of hope." He strongly believes that any successful psychotherapeutic approach leads to hope. At the same time he cautions that hope is a very complex concept and hoping is a very dynamic process. According to him, hope is not wishing or optimism. Hope can be tangible and intangible but most importantly, hope is unique to the individual. Given our professional experience as addiction counselors we are aware how important to cultivate and grow hope to guide our clients to achieve their recovery from addiction and at the same time maintain our personal sense of wellness. Personally we know how challenging it is when it comes to hope, we have no standard guideline to follow to develop hope. One thing we learn as helpers when we struggle with our clients in their healing journey, when we realize that without hope the possibility of alleviating suffering is impossible. We learn to hope for a successful recovery experience for our clients and learn to develop a dynamic equation--that is Hope=Successful Counseling Outcome. We know as helpers, we always strive for the successful outcomes while we help clients to develop self management skills to maintain their recovery. Jevne and Nekolaichuk (1998) in their book, "Hope and the helping relationship" suggest the 7C’s of hope from which effective counseling strategies could be developed to embrace and cultivate hope in addiction counseling:
Coping – practical and realistic in nature, keep everything going.
Committing – staying with the client’s frame of reference.
Celebrating – non-judgmental listening can initiate a strong hope-enhancing activity.
Caring – a hope focused counseling process invites the client to explore hope in recovery creatively.
Communicating – open communication can help clients to get connected to their unique sense of self and overcome the disconnection—the breeding ground of hopelessness.
Creating – initiating dialogue between counselor and client to create wonder! Clients learn to ask, "What does a hopeful person do?"
Community – a hopeful therapeutic alliance can ignite the sense of sharing and by so doing the client/counselor focus can move to recovery as an opportunity to embrace ‘Universality’ (Yalom) – clients will find their question about hope by answering, "See, I’m not alone in my suffering!"
Hope this is helpful to you.
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Counselor Wellness Discussion Forum