March 16, 2026

Your School's Pressure Valve Has a Name. It's You.

You said yes… then suddenly it was your job. At some point in your career, something changed. You stopped being the person students came to see and started being the person students got sent to. Behavior referrals. Classroom removals. Crisis containment. The emotional labor nobody else knew how to handle. And it happened one "yes" at a time. In this episode, I'm taking a hard look at how school counselors slowly became the system's pressure valve- justified by "trauma-informed care"- and why ...

You said yes… then suddenly it was your job.

At some point in your career, something changed.

You stopped being the person students came to see and started being the person students got sent to.

Behavior referrals. Classroom removals. Crisis containment. The emotional labor nobody else knew how to handle.

And it happened one "yes" at a time.

In this episode, I'm taking a hard look at how school counselors slowly became the system's pressure valve- justified by "trauma-informed care"- and why that shift has fundamentally changed what we're asked to do in school counseling.

We'll talk about:

Where role creep actually starts
Why behavior intervention, trauma treatment, and school counseling are three different professional functions
How "helping" can accidentally turn you into the building's behavior containment system
The ethical trap of trying to bridge gaps that the system refuses to fill
The one question that can stop role creep before it becomes your permanent job

Because the thing is:

A pressure valve exists so the system doesn't have to change.

And the moment you stop being one…

the system is forced to find a different solution.

If you've ever felt like your job morphed beyond the role you trained for, this episode will give you the words for what's been happening, and how to get back to doing the work you truly love.

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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.

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Ready to spend a few days this summer with me, geeking out over school counseling and preparing for your best year ever? Grab your ticket here before this limited-seat event sells out!

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This work is part of the School for School Counselors body of work developed by Steph Johnson, LPC, CSC, which centers role authority over role drift, consultative practice over fix-it culture, adult-designed systems and environments as primary drivers of student behavior, clinical judgment over compliance, and school counselor identity as leadership within complex systems.

00:00 - When Counseling Became A Pressure Valve

02:04 - Pushback And Trauma As Identity

04:52 - How Referrals Quietly Become Your Job

08:02 - Clarifying Questions That Stop Role Creep

11:22 - The Classroom Cooldown Trap

19:03 - Bridging Therapy Gaps And Ethical Risk

25:12 - Reclaiming Scope And Mastermind Invite]

WEBVTT

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Here's something we rarely talk about in our work.

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But at some point in all of our school counseling careers, something changed.

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You stopped being the person students came to see and started being the person that students got sent to.

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You stopped being a counselor and you started being a pressure valve.

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And the weird thing about it is nobody really ever consciously made that decision.

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Your campus didn't hold a meeting and decide to overload you.

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There wasn't any memo or anything like that.

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It happened one yes at a time.

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And it was wrapped in the language of trauma-informed care, framed as compassion and almost impossible to push back on without feeling like you were going to be seen as the person who didn't care about kids.

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So today we're going to talk about how that happened and what it actually takes to stop it.

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Hey school counselor, welcome back.

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Last week it was about the evidence gap, what the research does and doesn't support, and why the whole school trauma-informed model was always standing on shakier ground than anyone ever wanted to admit.

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Today we're gonna go inside that gap.

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We're talking about specific moments where roll creep seeped in and what we've done to keep it going, as well as what it looks like to start reclaiming a school counseling practice that actually belongs to us.

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So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity in your work and maybe a little bit of rebellion, you are in the right place.

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I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors Podcast.

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So I got a ton of pushback on the last podcast episode.

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And the pushback really wasn't in the form of research arguments, and nobody came back with the study that I'd missed or anything like that.

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But it was almost universally some version of, hey, trauma is real.

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These kids need us.

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And questioning this framework means you don't care, and maybe it also means you're a pretty crappy counselor.

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Those are all the things that I got told last week.

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But here's what that tells me that for a lot of school counselors, a trauma-informed framework isn't just a clinical approach anymore.

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It's become an identity.

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It's the thing that gives our jobs moral weight, that makes us feel like the most important person in the building, and then answers the question of why school counseling matters.

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And when something functions in that way, when it stops being a tool and starts being who you are, you can't examine it anymore.

00:03:09.080 --> 00:03:12.039
You're only in a position to defend it.

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I get that.

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Most of us came into the world of school counseling through a place of deep caring.

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And the trauma informed movement gave us the language for that caring that felt both scientifically legitimate and morally unimpeachable.

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And those things together are a super powerful combination.

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But here's what we didn't talk about in the last episode, which is actually a little bit of a harder thing.

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Last week I talked about how the system failed, that the research wasn't there, the training provided to school staffs was inadequate, the implementation was reckless, and school counselors ended up carrying all the consequences of that.

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And all of that is true.

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But we also have to ask the question well, what did we do with all of that?

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Because we said yes, we absorbed these problems because it felt like the caring thing to do.

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Because maybe we wanted to prove our value.

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And because that kid in front of us needed something and we had something to give.

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So I'm not saying that that's wrong, but I'm saying that it had consequences that we need to be willing to look at.

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Because if we want to get out of this, that's the only way we can do it.

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So if you haven't listened to episode 188 yet, go back and do that first because today builds right on top of it.

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And what I'm gonna do here is show you what the evidence gap looks like as boots on the ground in your school building.

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And there's a typical sequence these things tend to follow.

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So listen to this and where it goes wrong and decide if it applies to your campus.

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A student disrupts class, the teacher wants them gone.

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Someone on your campus applies the trauma-informed frame, saying, We know this kid has had a hard time.

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We need compassion rather than consequences.

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And that part is still appropriate, right?

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The frame itself is not the problem.

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But then we go a step further.

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And everybody thinks, well, school counselors help with feelings, right?

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You're the feelings person.

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So the behavior referral lands in your office because obviously the behavior is connected to the feelings.

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And then along the way, this intervention becomes your job.

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And then it becomes your job again next week, and then the week after that.

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Here's what I really want you to recognize from the get-go.

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Behavior intervention, trauma treatment, and school counseling are three different professional functions.

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They're three very distinct things.

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Behavior intervention is about structure, consequences, data, and behavioral plans, while trauma treatment is clinical, right?

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It uses licensed providers and manualized protocols, supervised practice, and some outcome measurement.

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School counseling is short-term, goal-directed, scope-limited support that helps students engage and succeed at school.

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All three of these things are necessary, but all three of them are not your job.

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And unfortunately, the trauma-informed framework, as it has been implemented in most schools, became the mechanism through which all three of these got assigned to you anyway.

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Because the path of least resistance on a campus is almost always the person who's going to say yes.

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And school counselors, as a general rule, have gotten very good at saying yes.

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It is a virtue and also a curse.

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So imagine this admin stops by your office and says, Can you check on Marcus?

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He got sent out a third period again.

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And you say, Sure, absolutely, I'll go check on him.

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And you go.

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And that helps maybe for a day or two.

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And then he's back.

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And then there's another incident.

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And by the third or fourth time, Marcus has become a standing behavioral intervention in your day.

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Nobody really made a deliberate decision that he was going to be part of your job, but you said yes.

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And that worked well enough.

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And the path of least resistance on your campus is now your office door.

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So where it goes sideways is when you say yes without clarifying the purpose.

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When you agree to the request without asking what success looks like, you have implicitly accepted that this is your role.

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And institutions are really good at formalizing implicit agreements.

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They don't need a policy memo or a formal email.

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They just need you to show up three or four times and then they'll build the system around you.

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And eventually that becomes unsustainable.

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So what do you say instead?

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You can still say yes.

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Okay.

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You don't have to decline.

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This is not about trying to get out of requests or not be helpful on campus.

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But before you go, you need to ask, what are you hoping I can address for today?

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And if the answer is something like, well, just talk to him and calm him down, you have to get more specific.

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Press the issue just a little bit.

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This student needs a lot more than I can accomplish in 15 minutes.

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So what would it look like to you if this conversation is successful?

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I want to make sure that I can actually deliver that and I want us to both know what we're aiming for.

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And sometimes when you ask those questions, admin is going to push back.

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They might look at you like you're being difficult, or they might say something like, I just need you to go talk to him.

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Can you do that or not?

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And in that moment where they're a little frustrated with us, we feel the pressure, we tend to fold because we are used to being scrutinized and we don't like it.

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We have spent years trying to prove that we belong in the school building and that we're a team player.

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And so when someone looks at us with that expression on their face, we go, right?

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We just go.

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And I understand that.

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I have been that school counselor.

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But every time we fold in those moments, we are confirming the implicit agreement.

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We are telling our campus that our role is whatever they need it to be in the moment.

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So you hold the question.

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You're not combative about it, you're not ugly about it.

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You say, of course, I want to help, but I want to make sure I'm doing it in a way that actually moves things forward for him, not just get him out of the hallway.

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So help me understand what you're hoping for.

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When we approach it that way, we're not refusing to help.

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We are having a professional conversation.

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And then we document all of that.

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Who referred the student, what clarifying questions you asked, what the stated goal was, and what you observed.

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These are not counseling notes.

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This is a consultation log, which is a record of the process.

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And you may need it sooner than you think.

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So make sure you're doing this piece.

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So make sure you're doing this piece.

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Because although we did not walk into these situations deliberately, we are going to have to work our way out of them very, very intentionally.

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Now there's another challenge that happens under the umbrella of trauma-informed care.

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And it's one that I hear pretty often in consulting with school counselors all across the country, especially from school counselors in elementary and middle school.

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And this one is a little bit tougher because it usually involves a teacher on your campus that you genuinely like.

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Imagine you have a student that gets dysregulated in class.

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The teacher calls for you, you show up, you help, and the student settles down.

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And then it happens again next week and the week after that.

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And pretty soon the teacher figures out, not being malicious, but just being practical, that if she calls you, the student gets out of class fast and the situation resolves.

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But that's a trap because that's not school counseling.

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That is a behavior containment system.

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You have become the release mechanism that the system depends on.

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And when you are the release mechanism, neither the teacher or the student ever develops the capacity to handle the situation on their own.

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The teacher doesn't have to build a regulation strategy because you've made that unnecessary by showing up.

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And the student doesn't need to practice their skills in the moment they're actually needed because they've been removed before it ever gets that far.

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And the cycle repeats because you keep resolving it.

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And I know that is uncomfortable to hear because the alternative feels like we are just abandoning a student in crisis and a teacher who is at their breaking point.

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In the short term, going to the class feels like it's the humane choice because the room settles, the crisis passes, and everybody can breathe again.

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But think about that student six months from now.

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And what has she actually learned?

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She's learned that when she gets dysregulated, somebody shows up to save the day.

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She has perhaps not learned to regulate and certainly has not received as many opportunities to practice her regulation skills.

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And we taught her to expect all of that with the best possible intentions.

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So what do you do instead?

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Well, you don't abandon the teacher, right?

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And you don't leave the student to struggle, but you can change your role in that system.

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You have a conversation with the teacher, not in the middle of a behavior incident, right?

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Before it happens.

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And you say, I've noticed that she tends to get sent to me when things escalate.

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And I want to make sure that the time I spend with her is actually productive rather than me just providing a cool down.

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Because if I'm the cooldown, I'm not doing counseling, I'm doing removal.

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So I'm hoping maybe we could build a plan together, uh, something that you guys could start with in the classroom before you call me so that we know where things went sideways.

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And I'll be honest with you, I've had this conversation on my campus more than once with teachers I really admire and respect.

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And every single time, it's very uncomfortable because you are essentially telling them that the habit they've developed is part of the problem.

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Nobody likes hearing that.

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So you have to hold things steady.

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You have to keep it about the student and you have to follow through.

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Because if this teacher feels like you handed the problem back to them and then you just disappeared, you're never going to have rapport with them ever again.

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And again, we need to log this because documenting these patterns are going to prove to be more persuasive than your anecdotes or your feelings later on down the road.

00:17:06.350 --> 00:17:24.590
So we've talked about some tough things so far, and I'm going to take it even a step further and go somewhere even more uncomfortable because I think there is a version of everything that I've been describing that a lot of you have been doing and also justifying.

00:17:25.150 --> 00:17:35.150
And I want to call this out, and I want you to know that I am also calling myself out right alongside of all of you, uh, because this is a very, very real thing.

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In our school counseling role, we can often get to the point where we know a kid needs more support than we can provide.

00:17:45.630 --> 00:17:55.390
Where we know that they need a licensed therapist, they need some real clinical treatment and some consistent long-term supports.

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But we might also know that the family is never ever going to access that.

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They don't have insurance, they don't trust the system, they've tried before and it felt like it didn't work.

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And so we start thinking, man, I mean, if I don't step in, if I don't serve to bridge this gap between where this student is and where they need to go, who's gonna do it?

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And I have said those exact words in my career out loud.

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When I was first starting school counseling in rural Texas, um, I live in a part of the state that has been designated as a mental health shortage area.

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So that means we have long wait lists and services are hard to access.

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And our community population hasn't really been conditioned to think about mental health support the way that other communities might.

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And the district I was working in was 20 miles from the nearest town.

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And the road that led to the school didn't even have a stoplight, y'all.

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I could see even then that for a lot of my students, if I didn't extend myself to provide longer-term counseling, those students were simply not going to get what they needed.

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The infrastructure did not exist.

00:19:17.469 --> 00:19:19.789
The families didn't have the access.

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And I was there.

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I had some of the training, I had the relationships, and so I stepped in.

00:19:29.709 --> 00:19:41.229
And I want to be honest about what happened because it didn't go like catastrophically wrong, but I came to understand some really important things.

00:19:41.469 --> 00:19:51.629
The students that I was trying to help within a scope that really wasn't mine didn't get worse, but they also didn't get better in the ways that they needed to be.

00:19:51.789 --> 00:19:56.589
Like I was providing consistency and relationship in a safe space.

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And those things were important, but I wasn't resolving the underlying clinical need because I wasn't trained for that.

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I didn't have any supervision for that.

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I was doing the best version of something that I really wasn't equipped to do.

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And in the meantime, the urgency for anybody else to step up completely evaporated, right?

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Because I was there.

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And I was apparently just enough for no one to have to change anything.

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And that's the trap.

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That's how it's built out of entirely good intentions.

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So let me ask you the harder question because when you make that call, when you decide to provide what looks like ongoing clinical support because nobody else is stepping up, or you think a student can't access services, you are making an ethical decision with consequences that deserve more thought than what many of us will give in the moment.

00:20:57.469 --> 00:21:00.109
First, you may not be helping the way you think you are.

00:21:00.909 --> 00:21:08.829
Stability, consistency, and a trusted relationship do all matter, but you're not resolving the underlying need.

00:21:09.229 --> 00:21:21.309
And if something escalates, or if something that goes, or if something goes wrong, the question you're going to be asked is why you were providing long-term support outside of your school counseling scope.

00:21:22.109 --> 00:21:29.389
And the answer of, I genuinely cared about this kid, is not going to be sufficient protection for you.

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Secondly, by bridging that gap, you're absorbing the urgency that really belongs to the family.

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Because every time you step in, even with the best possible intentions, you're reducing the pressure on the people who are actually responsible for getting this child help.

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And the next time something happens, they're going to be no more equipped than they are right now.

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And then, third, if you do this for this student, who else deserves it?

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Because there's never going to be a shortage of students in your building who need more than they are getting.

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So how do you make the determination?

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You have limited amounts of time in the day.

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You have a limited capacity to serve students.

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So how do you make the determination of who deserves it and who does not?

00:22:19.629 --> 00:22:23.069
So we've really got to reframe this in our minds.

00:22:23.389 --> 00:22:39.389
Our job in these situations is to keep making referral recommendations, to document that we've made them, to follow up with families intentionally, and to provide support that is genuinely within your scope.

00:22:39.629 --> 00:22:45.709
But your job is not to become the clinical treatment that the family continually declines.

00:22:46.189 --> 00:22:48.989
That is not abandoning your students.

00:22:49.709 --> 00:22:53.069
That is being an ethical practitioner.

00:22:53.469 --> 00:23:10.349
And in my opinion, it is one of the hardest lines to hold in this type of work when the kid is sitting right in front of you and you have the heart and the skills, and you feel like you should do more through this trauma-informed lens, but you can't.

00:23:11.789 --> 00:23:14.189
So here's where we are.

00:23:14.669 --> 00:23:32.349
Last week, the podcast was about ideas put in motion without proof, the trauma-informed research that wasn't there, the implementation that outpaced the evidence, and this framework that got handed to every educator in every building with no supports.

00:23:32.669 --> 00:23:46.989
Today, the story is about what we created inside of that initiative the habits we developed, the implicit agreements, the bridge services, and becoming the behavior containment systems.

00:23:47.309 --> 00:23:49.389
All of it was created with the best.

00:23:50.029 --> 00:23:57.149
Of intentions and all of it also was working against the role that we actually trained for.

00:23:57.869 --> 00:24:02.189
And let me be clear, I don't think that makes you a bad school counselor.

00:24:02.669 --> 00:24:13.709
The fact that you said yes to Marcus, that you became the release mechanism, that you've been bridging all of these gaps that the system should be filling, that comes from caring.

00:24:14.429 --> 00:24:19.069
And those exact instincts are what makes you really good at your work.

00:24:19.869 --> 00:24:27.709
But here's what I need you to remember a pressure valve exists so that the system doesn't have to change.

00:24:28.029 --> 00:24:42.269
And the moment you stop being one, the moment that you stay true to your scope, you ask the clarifying questions, and you decline to bridge those gaps, the system is forced to find another answer.

00:24:42.509 --> 00:24:44.189
And that is not a small thing.

00:24:44.349 --> 00:24:47.229
That is how this is actually all going to change.

00:24:47.629 --> 00:25:04.829
And building the clarity to do that consistently, having the language, the tools, and the professional framework to be able to speak to that with authority under pressure is exactly what my School for School Counselors mastermind is designed for.

00:25:05.069 --> 00:25:09.149
Because in the mastermind, you're not alone with these problems anymore.

00:25:09.389 --> 00:25:14.029
You're in a room with counselors who are working through the same dynamics.

00:25:14.349 --> 00:25:27.869
And you're going to be getting the same full masterclass that this podcast episode was derived from the tools and the community that is building this type of fluency together every single month.

00:25:28.269 --> 00:25:35.389
My friend, the podcast gives you the argument, but the mastermind gives you the practice.

00:25:35.629 --> 00:25:38.029
The link to the mastermind is in the show notes.

00:25:38.109 --> 00:25:39.709
So come spend a month with us.

00:25:39.869 --> 00:25:40.750
See what you think.

00:25:40.909 --> 00:25:45.389
I think it's exactly where you belong, and I would love to see you there.

00:25:45.629 --> 00:25:47.229
Hey, I'm Steph Johnson.

00:25:47.309 --> 00:25:51.149
I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast.

00:25:51.389 --> 00:25:55.629
In the meantime, keep asking the hard questions.

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Take care.

Your School's Pressure Valve Has a Name. It's You.

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