Exploring the relationship between guidance practice and self-care

*republished today from an earlier LinkedIn post to enable open access*

In 2023-24, I was delighted to be a guest editor for Veilederforum, operated by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills. Direct links and summaries of the articles are available here: Career guidance for marginalized groups and below. Many thanks to Mari Thorbjørnsrud for inviting me to take on this role and for the many conversations we had on how to ensure equitable, diverse and inclusive practice in the career guidance sector.

The articles:

Career guidance throughout the lifespan: Working with clients with dementia, Dr Laura Lebec and Dr Louise Ritchie

Practitioner Wellbeing, Dr Gill Frigerio

Career guidance for refugees and migrants, Professor Füsun Akkök and Honorary Associate Professor Dr Deirdre Hughes

Career development and mental wellbeing, Honorary Associate Professor Dr Deirdre Hughes, Liane Hambly and Dr Chris Percy

A note on gender

The articles were fully or lead-authored by women. Women make up over 70% of the career guidance workforce but are underrepresented in theory and scholarship; commissioning editors should be mindful to engage in positive action to elevate women’s voices in theory and scholarship in our field while employers and educators should endeavor to increase the representation of men working in our sector.

Cross-cutting themes: personal challenges

The articles consider topics that can occur at any point in a career counsellor’s practice. However, when inviting the authors to contribute to Veilederforum, I asked them to be mindful of how the issues discussed might impact personally on the career counsellor.

In the career guidance sector, career counsellors are client-focused, and support individuals who may be experiencing trauma, challenges, difficulties in life. This can have an impact on practitioners’ emotional well-being, who may share clients’ experiences in their own personal lives or carry the burden of clients’ experiences themselves. At the same time, as Hughes, Hambley and Percy note in their article, career counsellors are consistently “exposed to pressure from all sides, both in terms of time and workload.” Practitioners must not only meet clients’ needs and ensure their own well-being and resilience but do so in a timely, and often target-driven environment.

Guidance and the individual

In 2022, the UK’s Collins dictionary chose permacrisis as its word of the year. The media conveys a sense that lurching from one, “unprecedented,” social, economic or political crisis to the next is a new concept deserving of its own portmanteau label. As individuals living in a wealthy society, employed in caring or helping profession roles underpinned by reflective practice, career counsellors should be aware of wider global contexts and their own underlying privilege. Career counsellors work simultaneously in micro and macro contexts, discussing daily lives that exist in a huge complex world. They hear distressing stories from clients whose life experiences have been or continue to be traumatic. As Frigero surfaces in her article, having a calling to work in this sector does not mean practitioners are detached from the emotional contexts they work in, in fact the opposite can be true: “The attachment to the work that comes with a vocation can also lead the employees to over-identify with the job, so that they neglect other roles and work longer days than is healthy. Feeling a calling brings with it a very real risk of work-related stress and can also lead to burnout: a serious health hazard that leads to reduced cognitive function and reduced work ability.”

It is not unrealistic to assume that at any point in their working life, a career adviser may experience compassion fatigue and become overwhelmed or incapacitated when faced with a client or clients’ who are experiencing trauma. Using dementia as an example, Lebec and Ritchie discuss in their article how it can be challenging for the career counsellor to work closely with a client with dementia if they have experience of dementia in their own family, circle of friends or at work. This can easily affect the impartiality of guidance, emphasising the importance of high-quality training for career counsellors. Difficult life experiences may mirror those of the career guidance practitioner at any point. A predisposition to empathetic engagement is fundamental within a helping profession but fear of vicarious trauma may mean career counsellors do not want to fully engage with extremely troubling concepts to which they are regularly or extraordinarily exposed.

Domestic abuse as an example scenario

In my own research exploring career guidance and domestic abuse, these concepts are easily identified. While guidance counselling must always enable an environment in which any possible disclosure can take place, the contracting process could be a barrier for disclosure of domestic abuse due to an emphasis on lawful conduct and wellbeing concerns, and safeguarding legislation may come into play if young people are involved.

A divulgence of domestic abuse may be anticipated or unforeseen. In either scenario, relevant supervision and support (best practice, referral organisations, clear boundaries, practical resources) for career counsellors working with victims is inconsistent and practitioners may not feel suitably qualified to intervene.

Furthermore, in some cases, until a client presents their story a career counsellor may not realise they are experiencing similar patterns of abuse in their own lives, particularly in the scenario of emotional, coercive control. In relation to domestic abuse, the predominantly female staffing of guidance settings is also worth further exploration. With 1 in 4 experiencing domestic abuse in their lifetime, and the majority of victims being women, the probability that a career development professional will encounter domestic abuse within their client group or amongst their peers is highly likely.

The impact of domestic abuse on career decision-making can be profound and this must be incorporated in the understanding of career over a lifetime.

Self-care in career guidance practice as professional development

In their article Akkök and Hughes highlight the importance of the career adviser’s emotional steadiness. They refer to the importance of supervision opportunities, and ensuring space is available for career guidance practitioners to “download worries and stresses” which can often not be available. They signpost being part of a professional body, whose moderated communities of interest/practice can support well-being strategies for career counsellors as well as clients. There are many effective online communities of practice linked to professional career guidance organisations. In these forums, questions are posed by career counsellors, new and experienced, to explore ethical dilemmas and everyday challenges within practice which extant theory and professional guidelines may not fully cover or where specific support is needed. Where supervision is unobtainable, career counsellors should proactively seek out relevant membership networks and communities of practice, to access information about professional learning opportunities and support their professional development and wellbeing.

A career counsellor cannot predict what their next client may reveal to them. Career counsellors meet many different people who are in major or minor life crises, and it is inevitable that some of these experiences will affect a career counsellor. Professional development must incorporate consideration of a career counsellor’s own wellbeing. Continuous professional learning does not have to be paid-for to be effective and should aim to expand the knowledge of the individual career guidance practitioner and contribute to their professional development. During my time as a Veilederforum Guest Editor I was interviewed for the guidance forum podcast on this topic, which is available here: The tutor forum podcast: Inclusive practice and (for Norwegian speakers) I also recommend Marie Haavik’s podcast on career counsellor resilience. For more information on freely available Open Educational Resources for professional development for career counsellors, please go to my list at: Open Educational Resources for Career Development and Career Development Professionals