1: Introduction

Most people love the idea of self-care. It brings forth images of engaging in a spa day, practicing deep breathing, sitting cross legged while watching a beautiful sunset, or journaling.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Establishing a practice of self-care is essential to role in your role as a counselor. (Photo by cottonbro studio from Pexels.)

These are, of course, all great avenues to achieve self-care, but possessing useful and accurate information can take you further than you may have imagined in not only applying this valuable and necessary concept to your own life, but to the lives of your clients as well.

Video \(\PageIndex{1}\): A self-care routine is essential for your wellbeing. However, self-care is not merely sitting on a couch watching the television; rather, it includes eating a healthy diet, spending time meditating and exercising, enjoying nature and the outdoors, and engaging in self-expression activities. ("Self Care: What It Really Is | Susannah Winters | TEDxHiltonHeadWomen" by TedX Talks from YouTube.)

Wellness can perhaps best be understood if separated into various segments or areas of our lives as humans. One way to think about this is through the work of Jane Myers and Thomas Sweeney (2004) who developed a model of wellness that parses wellness into 8 separate, but connected, parts. These parts include, but are not limited to, our social lives, our spiritual selves, our financial and/or occupational situations, our relationship with the environment, our emotional state, our physical selves, our sense of personal identity and how that relates to others around us, and our sense of self-worth.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): The 8 Dimensions of Wellness include Spiritual, Intellectual, Cognitive, Vocational, Social, Environmental, Physical, and Emotional. (Illustration used with permission by Dr. Debra Majewski.)

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), counseling's primary accrediting body, mentions wellness and self-care 8 times in Section 3 of their standards (2024). Three of those mentions particularly stand out. Standard 3.A.11 primarily focuses on the counselor’s responsibility to engage in care to self to avoid burn-out in order to provide ethical and effective practice to their clientele. Standard 3.C.11 addresses various factors that affect an individual’s overall wellness as the result of lifespan development, while standard 3.E.17 discusses the importance of the counselor managing their caseload effectively to achieve optimal wellness and avoid burnout. The American Counseling Association (ACA) Code of Ethics (2014) also states that "counselors engage in self-care activities to maintain and promote their own emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual well-being to best meet their professional responsibilities" (Section C Introduction, pg. 8). Chi Sigma Iota (n.d.), the international counseling and academic professional honor society, has also developed a set of nine wellness competencies for counseling students and professional counselors. These are part of a broader website about wellness in counseling that contains links to wellness inventories, research, videos, and more information.

It is my hope that by identifying and exploring each domain of wellness, it will assist you with a heightened awareness of what wellness is and why self-care is essential for holistic functioning as a clinician. I also seek to increase your knowledge base and comfort level with these topics so that your willingness and ability to share this with clients and assist them with their wellness journey becomes a regular part of your practice as a professional counselor.