April is Counselor Awareness Month. My blog post almost always focus on client needs, recommendations, and other fun mental health topics, however, this month I want to change it up and give counselors the awareness we do not always feel. To become a licensed professional counselor one must complete a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, pass the NCE, have 3000 hours of direct/indirect hours, and continue to better their techniques and skills. All of this added up takes around 8-9 years from beginning to end, and yet very few people acknowledge how hard it is to become a counselor, but I think it is important that people know.

Throughout the pandemic, counselor have been working to help people figure out how to manage their anxieties and their worries of many unknown factors throughout the year. All counselors have been doing this while attempting to manage their own fears, anxiety, and worry for themselves, loved ones, and clients. Though many health care workers have been admired and applauded for their work these past few years, counselors have been left out of the eye of the public for the hard work going on behind the scenes.

I do not say any of this in hopes for counselors to become more recognized and applauded, but to acknowledge that another reason for the quiet regarding counselors is due to the heart behind the counselors themselves. Many counselors do not do this work for fame or fortune, in fact, many go in knowing they will often gain the opposite. Counselors enter this field to help people, that is the bottom line of it all. Counselors hope to change lives and are happy to be sitting in a chair to witness it.

Counselors- during this month of April, I hope you can join me in enjoying and celebrating the work that we do. The fact that we get to see client’s bare hearts, bravery, trauma, anxiety, happiness, and all the in between and be trusted to sit with them week after week. This career is challenging and comes with little recognition and awareness, but it is worth it to see the breakthroughs, epiphanies, and tears of joy. Carl Rogers once said, “But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish”. As counselors it is a great privilege to sit and watch life constantly fight to win even in the most adverse circumstances.  #burnbrightnotout