The Relationship Between Spending Time On Nature And The...

Counselors dedicate their lives to helping people emotionally in need, and eventually this dedication begins to produce distress which, if not dealt with can lead into more serious issues. One of the more serious issues that counselors are at higher risk to experience as job-related stress increases—is burnout. In order for counselors to maintain healthy levels of compassion, as well as their ability to help their clients, a self-care plan is a necessity. This self-care plan must effectively cope with frequent job-related stress. If the self-care plan does not effectively cope with this stress, then burnout is likely to be experienced. However, there are successful strategies to prevent burnout that may help enable the counselor to†¦show more content†¦Consequently, experiencing burnout, the counselor places the counselling relationship at risk, as well as potentially one’s long-term career goals. Keywords: burnout, stress, nature Examining the Likelihood of Reducing the Risk of Counselor Burnout by Implementing a Preventive Self-care Plan Utilizing Nature and the Outdoors Burnout is a stress related syndrome that negatively affects people in the helping profession (Maslach Jackson, 1981). Since counselors spend their days working with hurting people, they are especially at risk for experiencing burnout (Maslach Jackson, 1981). Furthermore, a precursor to burnout is ineffectively coping with job-related stress (Weber Jaekel-Reinhard, 2000). Once burnout occurs, its’ effects touch the lives of the affected, including family, and also clients, so it is important for counselors to implement coping strategies that effectively target stress and burnout (Stamm, 2010). As Clinton and Ohlschlager (2002) stated, â€Å"our desire to counsel must be fueled by compassion,† so counselors need to protect themselves from burnout in order to provide the necessary compassion to clients. In addition, by im plementing effective methods for coping with job related stress, counselors should take a proactive approach toward prevention. Furthermore in studies, counselors who experienced significant burnout were aware of the reduction of personal stress, while engaged in active coping strategies, but most did not take the