Creativity in Counseling

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 CACREP and ACA Code of Ethics standards addressing counselor self-care as a necessary facet of ethical practice.

There is a growing interest in the utility of complementary health
approaches (CHAs) to promote wellness and health in the United
States. Research from medical, allied health, and mental health fields
reflect this expanding interest; however, very little research focuses on
counselors and the integration of CHAs within practice or referral of
counseling clients to Complementary Health Practitioners (CHPs). The
current study expanded this research using transcendental phenomenology to explore the experiences, perspectives, and processes in use by current independently licensed professional counselors referring to complementary health practitioners (CHPs). The authors discuss and explore implications of these findings.