Self Care

image from google.com

Last night as I was reading my theories textbook and as I was reading about Adlerian therapy and Adlers beliefs about counseling and the helping relationship it got me thinking about self care. Adlers view of the person got me thinking of how important it really is for anyone but extremely important for counselors to make sure we have balance between work and home/life. As counselors we are constantly sharing the burdens of our clients, so not only do we have our own issues but we have those of our clients. In a perfect world as counselors we would be able to leave our clients at the office but we don't live in a perfect world so naturally we take some of our clients home with us and into our personal lives most often at a cost to our well being and the balance of our professional and personal lives.

Image from google.com

So what is the cost of not taking care of ourselves? What price as counselors do we pay if we neglect our own self care? Of course we stand to hit the all important "burnout" that many helping professionals hit but what else? What damage does not having the right balance cause to us as people? What does it do to our loved ones? All of these questions are reminders that as helping professionals we have to put our self care on the top of our to do list and partake in activities that nurture not only us but those around us as well because in the long run if we are healthy and have a good balance between work/home our clients will be the ones who get the ultimate payoff...So add the image below to your desktop for a week or two until you get used to doing your self care :)