Creating and retaining empathic connections with the most disenfranchised among us can take a toll on the wellness of counselor advocates. The Advocacy-Serving Model is introduced as a creative approach to strengthening the ability of advocates to serve through enhancing awareness, focusing actions, and connecting to community. The model integrates Buddhist practices into advocacy work. This article includes a brief description of advocacy, an overview of applicable Buddhist approaches, and an illustration of the model used in individual advocacy work.
Professional counselors work daily with compassion and connection, yet must also manage trauma and pain. Clients' stories of loneliness, fear, abuse, and anger frequently fill the landscape of a counselor's work. Counselors may experience burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma by failing to recognize and adequately address the negative emotions and thoughts they may unintentionally carry from their work. By prioritizing and attending to self-awareness and self-care, counselors maintain their clinical efficacy and personal well-being. This article presents creative writing as a valuable self-care technique, offers a writing structure for counselors to use, and includes two brief illustrations of creative writing that promote self-care.Spring comes with its flowers, autumn with the moon, summer with breezes, winter with snow; when useless things don't stick in the mind, that is your best season.
Although an ethical sanction is viewed as an incredibly stressful event for professional counselors, the experience of being sanctioned is not well known. This article provides an overview of the sanctioning process, a discussion of professional silence, and a case example of a sanctioning experience for a counselor. The sanctioning experience is described in a 3-stage response sequence and is illustrated with journal entries from a sanctioned counselor. Response interventions for each stage are suggested, and implications for the counseling profession are offered.
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