Humility, kindness and compassion are great traits for a counselor in training and even for licensed therapists. This profession entails a life of learning to ensure growth in knowledge and competence. Each client comes with their own experiences, background, cultural diversity and presenting issues and it's the counselor's responsibility to expand their knowledge and skills to meet the clients needs. It's also the responsibility of the counselor to transfer care to a skilled therapist if they are not competent in the area needed to help the client. In addition, counselors need to grow in their documentation and diagnosis to represent the clients cases effectively. This will help meet treatment goals and offer valuable information to other providers they work with

​

In addition, self-care is an important element for therapists to prioritize and ensure they are psychologically fit and refrain from transferring their own values, beliefs and issues to clients. Self-care can be vacations, seeing a their own therapist, exercise, mediation, etc. This also encompasses that all responsibilities are being met by the clinician such as effective communication of practice policies, emergency protocol and holding liability insurance to ensure the general welfare of the client is the priority.

​

To continue growth in this area continuous learning from research, peers, supervisors and continuous education is important and something I invest in as a student and a professional. ​​​