Embodied Self-Care: Enhancing Awareness and Acceptance Through Mindfulness-Oriented Expressive Writing Self-Disclosure

ABSTRACT

Self-care is fundamental to mental health practitioner training and professional efficacy. Expressive writing about stressful events has been researched and shown to have positive physical and psychological effects. Mindfulness, an embodied approach to clinical practice and education, has also been studied and documented as an effective self-care approach. Embodied education integrates experiential history with current learning, which may influence future practitioner performance and client outcomes. This self-care exercise is designed to promote awareness and acceptance among counselors and counselors-in-training, as well as among clients, through use of a mindfulness-oriented written self-disclosure task that may facilitate meaning-making and may enhance psychological well-being and therapeutic efficacy. It aligns with Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs and American Counseling Association Code of Ethics standards addressing counselor self-care as a necessary facet of ethical practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Counselor education/training
• counselor self-care
• creativity in counseling
• embodied education
• expressive writing
• mindfulness
• therapeutic relationship

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nevine Sultan

Nevine Sultan is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.