COUNSED 250 · Introduction to Counseling · Unit 5
The Person of the Counselor
Characteristics of an effective counselor, and the wonder that keeps us learning
I · Foundational Capacities · 1 of 2
What You Bring to the Work
These are the same domains counseling programs look for at admission.
Real connection: interested, warm, and willing to be affected by what others share.
Noticing your own thoughts, feelings, and reactions, and getting curious instead of just acting. Self-awareness starts here.
Staying steady when feelings run high, whether they’re yours or theirs.
Holding more than one perspective, and tolerating not knowing yet without rushing to fix, label, or judge.
I · Foundational Capacities · 2 of 2
Humility, Feedback, and Growth
Curious about how other people see the world. Your view is one view among many, not the default.
Supervision readiness: taking correction without falling apart or getting defensive, and then using it.
Growing through hard experiences, not just getting through them. Your story becomes a resource, not a blind spot.
II · Emotional Maturity and Presence
Emotional Maturity
You can feel something strongly without it running you.
Your feelings are yours. You own them rather than handing them to other people to carry or fix.
Staying close to someone without taking on their anxiety as your own. Connected and still steady.
II · Emotional Maturity and Presence
Presence, or “Holding Space”
Steady, calm attention so they can feel what they feel, without your needing to fix, rescue, or change the subject for your own comfort.
Tracking what they’re actually feeling
A stable place their distress can land (Winnicott’s “holding environment”)
A settled nervous system lends stability to one that isn’t
A plain test: Can I stay with someone’s pain without needing it to stop for my own sake?
III · Character: Virtues and Values · 1 of 2
Who You Are When It Counts
Outside matches inside (Rogers’s congruence). You’re not playing a role.
Doing right when no one is checking, and acting the same across settings. Ethics is who you are, not just rules.
Saying hard things gently, staying in painful conversations, and looking at your own issues.
Knowing what you don’t know, and being willing to admit mistakes.
III · Character: Virtues and Values · 2 of 2
Compassion, Patience, and Hope
Caring about someone’s suffering in a way that moves you to help them, not to pity them.
Respecting that change happens at the client’s pace, not yours.
Believing people can grow, even when they can’t believe it themselves yet.
Corey · Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, Ch. 2 · 1 of 3
The Counselor as a Person
They know who they are, what they want from life, and what matters to them.
Their worth doesn’t depend on clients needing them. They can give and receive help.
Willing to leave the familiar and grow, even when it’s uncomfortable.
They choose to live fully, not just get by.
They don’t hide behind a professional role or façade.
Corey · Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, Ch. 2 · 2 of 3
Lightness, Presence, and Care
They see the lighter side of life without making light of pain.
They learn from errors and don’t punish themselves for them.
Here with the client, not stuck in the past or worried about the future.
They see how their own culture and their clients’ cultures shape values and behavior.
Care that comes from respect, trust, and valuing people, not from a need to be needed.
Corey · Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, Ch. 2 · 3 of 3
The Counselor as a Professional
They enter a client’s world without getting lost in it, and build collaborative relationships.
Real satisfaction from the work, without letting it become their whole identity.
They bring energy and commitment to their work and their lives.
Present with clients, but they don’t carry clients’ problems home, and they protect time for their own lives.
Managing Expectations: Wonder and Surprise
Awe and Wonder
Inspires the wish to understand.
Appreciates up close.
Inspires the wish to let it shine: to acknowledge and to unite.
Appreciates from a distance.
Wonder fuels our passion for exploration and learning, for curiosity and adventure.
Managing Expectations: Wonder and Surprise
Confusion: Effortful, but Not Too Much
Learning needs to be effortful, but not too much.
Start out curious
Do some learning; productive confusion
The payoff of working it through
The cycle keeps going
Managing Expectations: Wonder and Surprise
Interest and Curiosity
Often used almost interchangeably, but they are separate.
Cognitive openness to engage with a topic or experience.
Recognizing a gap in something interesting, then closing it cognitively and emotionally until it becomes part of us: knowledge or skill that “belongs” to us.
Diagram: a circle labeled what I know now and a circle labeled what I want to know, with the gap between them; curiosity closes the gap.
Managing Expectations: Wonder and Surprise
Surprise
Information that doesn’t fit our current understanding or expectations.
In a horror movie
In a comedy show
Unexpectedly seeing a loved one at the end of the terminal
Welcome or unwelcome, we keep seeking it. Why? Perhaps a break from life’s monotony… or an addiction to stimulus.