Task-Oriented Self-Care: An Innovative Approach to Wellness for Counselors

ABSTRACT

Self-care is an often-cited obligation of professional counselors in order to prevent compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, and burnout. Nearly all examples of counselor self-care in the peer-reviewed literature emphasizes abstract activities that engage self-reflection, emotions, or other processes similar to what counselors use in sessions with clients. We propose a new conceptualization of self-care called Task-Oriented Self-Care (TOSC) in which counselors use Realistic tasks (as described in John Holland’s Typology) to activate potentially underutilized strengths to prevent and treat burnout symptoms. We review existing self-care literature, describe the specific elements of TOSC, and provide examples of TOSC in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Counselor self-care
• burnout prevention
• counselor wellness
• creativity
• holland typology
• creativity in counseling