All About School Counselor Burnout

[00:00:00] Hello my friends, and welcome back to the School for School Counselors Podcast. This is episode three, the last in our series of our inaugural episodes. And it's so funny to think about because I know someday we're going to look back on these beginning episodes and just laugh and laugh together about how funny they sound and how different they're probably going to be, than what things are going to sound like in the future. And that's exciting to think about, but I'm just so excited and grateful and humbled that you've chosen to join us on this journey. And I promise you, my team and I are going to be working our guts out to make every second absolutely worth it for you. 

[00:00:44] So please, if you've got any comments for us, go ahead, make sure that you subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating, or even a review. You know, those are like gold in helping us get the word out and let more people know about what we're doing here on the podcast. It would just mean, so, so much to us. 

[00:01:03] Today's topic started out completely different. I was going to talk a little bit about some of the non-counseling duties that we're often asked to do at school, and how those can really start to wear on us without the right mindset. But what it really morphed into was some thoughts on burnout and how these non-counseling duties not only support burnout, but what true burnout really is, and maybe some new perspectives for you about why we often feel this way. 

[00:01:39] So y'all know, the 21-22 school year was one of the hardest school years in education that pretty much anybody can remember. 

[00:01:48] And the stories that people are telling of feeling discontent, of feeling burnout, are everywhere, right? You've seen them everywhere you look; you're hearing this stuff. But even before COVID hit, and all of the COVID fallout that followed, school counselors were already struggling with the disconnect between what we were trained to do and what we're actually asked to do at school. 

[00:02:14] In this episode, I'm going to give you a research based lens for what's driving school counselors' experiences of burnout and a different way of looking at it, or even how to be on watch for it beyond the advice that we typically get, which is, "set good boundaries and be sure to practice good self care" right? That's usually all we get. And you know, and I know, that advice is not helpful, especially in the moment. 

[00:02:44] When we've reached burnout or we're on the verge of burnout, and someone walks up and they tell us, you know, "Practice good self care/ go get your nails done/ have a glass of wine, a bubble bath/ go for a walk in nature with your dog," that is like throwing a water balloon at a house fire, y'all. It's too little too late. When we start to feel like we're on the edge of burning out, we've got to have some better alternatives. And I think that's something that we need to get super- real about. I think we need to stop telling people to set boundaries and practice self-care, and I think we really need to start taking a good look at what's driving this. 

[00:03:26] So a lot of the confusion and discontent that we see in our field comes from a lack of understanding of our role. Our administrators, the people that we work with at our schools, even our district level personnel often do not completely understand what it is we're supposed to be doing. 

[00:03:46] And most of the counselors I've talked to have said things like this, so see if you hear yourself in any of these statements: 

[00:03:55] "People just don't understand what I do." 

[00:03:58] "My principal just doesn't get this. They think it's all fluff." 

[00:04:02] "They keep telling me, well, that's what our last counselor did." 

[00:04:07] "I feel like a secretary." 

[00:04:11] Do any of those statements resonate with you?

[00:04:13] Have you ever felt like any of that before? 

[00:04:17] These statements are very, very real, but I think it's important to examine them through the correct lens, because if we're not careful, we start to spiral down into these endless gripe sessions. I know you know what I mean- you've seen them go down on social media, right? And everybody just starts chiming in and adding fuel to the fire, and pretty soon, we're just having a huge, epic gripe fest. 

[00:04:43] One of the things that I think is super important to recognize- and again, this is something you might not even realize because it's not something that we talk about a lot in our field- our ASCA national model, which basically tells us what's supposed to be going on in our counseling programs, is less than 20 years old. 

[00:05:04] Did you realize that? It was first published in 2003, but the way we talk about it makes it seem like it's been around forever, right? It's less than 20 years old. And so we haven't had a lot of time, really, to work with it, educationally speaking, because change in education happens at a glacial pace. 

[00:05:31] It feels like things take for- ever to change. And the school counselors' roles are going to be no exception. I'm sure you remember learning that we started as vocational counselors in the early 1900s, right? And we remained vocational or guidance counselors all the way up to the two thousands- 'cause remember, the ASCA model was first published in 2003. So for almost a hundred years, we were solely vocational and guidance counselors. And now all of a sudden in the last 20 years or so, we've pivoted into more of a mental health role with different focuses and new expectations of our duties but it's going to take awhile for the rest of the educational world to make that change. 

[00:06:24] We are working with, and we are working for, people who are very much rooted in that old model of guidance counseling: that's probably the way they were trained. And we're still in the process of transitioning all those hearts and minds into to the new model and the new ideas of what school counselors do. 

[00:06:47] When we have that kind of role ambiguity- where we're trained in a specific skill set, but then we're asked to do all these other unrelated tasks- that provides us with higher levels of stress. It also gives us higher burnout, higher attrition, and reduced job performance. And this is empirically validated, this is not just my opinion. We'll put a link in the show notes for you of some of the studies that we're using for this podcast episode, but this is proven stuff. 

[00:07:22] So it's kind of maddening to know that you have a mental health skill set, and then you're being relegated to testing coordination, running meetings, or taking care of registration paperwork: any of those other random tasks you're assigned to do. That is a large piece of what is contributing to high levels of stress in school counseling. 

[00:07:45] Now. If these feelings keep going, and they persist over time, then we start moving toward burnout. 

[00:07:55] Burnout happens when you have a high expectation and excitement for fulfillment in your work. That's where we start. When we come out of grad school, we have high expectations. We have excitement that we're going to be fulfilled in our work. We've been trained on models. We've been trained on intervention methods. We've been trained in best case scenarios. Right? 

[00:08:19] Textbook oriented scenarios. And then- we get into the real world. We start to experience the stress of the obligations. We start to experience stress from all those non-related demands, like all the non-counseling duties. . And we just talked about those: all those other things that we're being asked to do are around our skillset. 

[00:08:41] And then we get overwhelmed by demands from our stakeholders. So our administrators aren't understanding the role that we play. Parents have concerns. Students, staff, all the stakeholders around our program... , People don't understand the time, necessarily, that it takes to do our jobs. They assume that we can just sit down and talk with the students for 10 minutes and, everything's fine, everything will be great in their world after that, right? They don't understand the investment there. 

[00:09:12] I think too, sometimes stakeholders don't understand truly what's at stake. They don't have that bird's eye view of emotional health, and so they can't conceptualize where certain student situations might be headed. They can't see the outcomes for students if the interventions aren't provided. There's often a huge disconnect there where you can see the train coming down the tracks, but no one else seems to be able to see it. 

[00:09:40] And so then as we move through that progression, we had our high expectation. We had excitement for fulfillment. We start to experience the stress, these extra demands. Our stakeholders are not in alignment with us. So we began to try to advocate. We ask for change. Sometimes we try to fix it by working harder, right? 

[00:10:00] And then we start to do things that are out of character, or that we know might not be the best for us. 

[00:10:07] Some examples of that might be taking paperwork home so that we can open up time during the workday to see students. Or even just working harder and harder, skipping lunch, not taking care of ourselves, trying to get to ALL THE THINGS. Sometimes, we even get so invested in all of those patterns that we began to deny to ourselves that there's even a problem: "I can handle this: I got this under control." 

[00:10:33] And any of those are obviously reason for concern. You know, when you're on fire to be a helper, when you truly believe in the power of mental health intervention, and when you know what can be accomplished with concerted effort- and what changes can be made for students- and then you're prevented from making those changes, it can feel pretty demoralizing. So you try to make changes. Your efforts might fail. The barriers to change might be too high. Or maybe your motivation just ends up completely crashing. "Screw this. I'm not doing this anymore." It happens a lot. 

[00:11:11] And then we start to lose sense of the meaning of why we're fighting the fight. 

[00:11:17] So I am a huge fan of existential thinking. Victor Frankl, logotherapy- you probably remember learning about that in grad school. I think it's so powerful in situations like this, where you can see the potential for change, you are very willing to be a part of that change, but you also know it is going to go pretty slowly.

[00:11:44] Victor Frankl, if you'll remember, wrote Man's Search for Meaning, and a large part of that book was focused on the people he met as a prisoner in a concentration camp during World War II. He was really watching to see what characteristics, what mindsets, what thoughts helped people survive circumstances that were virtually hopeless.

[00:12:10] What did they do in order to make it through each day and try to push towards survival? He built his whole concept of logotherapy around that. 

[00:12:22] So we are nowhere near that situation, right? But the line of thought can be helpful when we feel like our hands are tied behind our backs and there's not much that we can do about the situation. 

[00:12:36] As school counselors, we certainly did not enter the field for the fame and the fortune! There is something underneath it, right? There's some reason that you decided to pursue this career; there's some reason that makes you feel the drive to serve students and families.

[00:12:55] And I'll tell you- of all the school counselors I've known in all the hundreds that I've worked with through our Get the Job program, in our Mastermind community- everyone that I've talked to all have a reason why. 

[00:13:11] There have only been two folks that I've ever spoken with in my entire career that were not able to immediately pinpoint their rationale for entering a helping field. We all have that story. We all have that narrative running through our mind and that's what's driving us toward what we're working for. That's what inspires us to do this work each day. 

[00:13:36] So first, I think it's just really important to keep sight of that meaning. That underlying current that compels you to do this kind of work when most people won't touch it with a 10 foot pole. It's difficult. This is not an easy line of work, despite what lots of other folks might think.

[00:13:59] Um, you know, I know you've been accused of, of having a lot of extra downtime in your office, which is so laughable, but that's just, that's the way it is.

[00:14:10] Keeping your motivation, keeping your eye on the prize, is the first thing. You've got to remember what brought you to the field. Does that mean that it's okay if people mistreat you or take advantage of you? Absolutely not. But if it is within you and within your circumstances to persevere with that motivation guiding you, then definitely go with it. Don't give up so fast and not give yourself a chance to try to realize what kinds of changes we're gonna be making. 

[00:14:48] The second thing I think is keeping that motivation and drive and perspective. It's very easy and tempting to let our expectation or our desires for the change we want to see in the world run away with us.

[00:15:04] I think this is what we really need to be emphasizing when we talk about keeping good boundaries. We often misconstrue that information to things like, you know, leave work at home, don't check your email at home, those kinds of things.

[00:15:19] But what I really think good boundaries means is keeping things in perspective. Not letting our desire for change or our expectations run away with us. Staying grounded in the reality while also being able to keep our eye on the prize. 

[00:15:39] So maintaining our motivation is gonna go a long way in helping to prevent feelings of burnout. Keeping a realistic perspective on that motivation is also going to be key. But the last thing I think can really help is some really good advocacy. And you're gonna hear me talk about advocacy a lot in some later episodes of this podcast, 'cause it is a huge huge concern of mine.

[00:16:10] And notice I use the word concern. I truly believe that the way most school counselors are being advised to advocate for their programs on their campuses is absolutely and completely wrong. I don't think that it is productive. I think it is the easy way to explain it and it doesn't hold up. So we'll be talking a lot more in the future about advocacy, but just keep in mind, those ASCA standards have not been out a super long time. We're right in the middle of this changeover from guidance to mental health. And our organizations have done a good job of catalyzing that change, but we can come in on our end and advocate from the inside out, not only for our campuses, but for our profession as a whole. That's been our goal at School for School Counselors since day one. This has always been an attempt to educate and then empower, which leads to advocacy for school counselors. And we are actively working to build that platform for school counselors all across the nation.

[00:17:22] It is a crazy idea. It's absolutely nuts, but I'm telling you, we are going full speed ahead on this because we truly, deeply believe in it. 

[00:17:35] So, if you haven't joined our School for School Counselors Facebook group, go over there! We would love to see your beautiful smiling photos smiling back at us in all your posts. Make sure you put "podcast" in your join request so we can get you in there quickly.

[00:17:51] And the other thing that you can do is join us for our upcoming Best Year Ever celebration. It's gonna be amazing! We do it every year: this year we're starting July 25th. So if you're listening, close to the beginning of when the podcast was launched, you'll, you'll be able to hop on over schoolforschoolcounselors.com/bestyearever.

[00:18:13] Join in on that. Like I said, completely free. It'll be a four night summit, and we're gonna be covering all the essentials that you'll need to get your year started off on the absolute best foot possible. You will be totally prepared for the beginning of the school year, with lots of things that we talk about routinely, as well as some reminders, some resources, and some things like that.

[00:18:36] Just to get you on fire, get you motivated and ready for the beginning of the school year.

[00:18:40] We're really gonna be focusing on advocacy and resisting those feelings of stress and burnout, cuz we're here for you. That's what we're all about here. We love curating information so that we can all learn from and lean on each other. We wanna empower one another in this wild, crazy, wonderful world of school counseling. 

[00:19:03] So I hope you enjoyed this. It was kind of an odd topic for the beginning of a podcast but I'm telling you, it's something that was really heavy on my heart and would not leave my mind. So I knew it was something that you needed to hear.

[00:19:17] Please make sure, again- give us your thoughts. Give us a review in your podcast service of choice, give us a rating, anything to let us know how we're doing. 

[00:19:27] All right, y'all, have a wonderful day and we'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast.

[00:19:35] Have the BEST day!