Why personal growth is professional growth

I can't speak for my fellow classmates, but I have long assumed I am not the only one whose work toward a master's degree in rehabilitation and mental health counseling has been more than a professional journey. It is, in fact, a professional journey -- but a personal one, too. (That's what happens when all your professors are therapists.) So while we grow as counselors, we have the opportunity to grow as people -- that is, if we are willing.

And both professionally and personally, I think we should be.

I will never forget the first class I took in our graduate program: foundations of mental health counseling. From day one, I had come to the conclusion that every person on earth should take the class -- not because I think every person should be a counselor, but because it is the perfect class to spark the kind of self awareness that makes all of our needs for growth completely obvious (and yes, we all need to grow!). You learn about empathy versus sympathy: As Brene Brown puts it in her book I Thought it was Just Me (But it Isn't), "...when we give sympathy, we do not reach across to understand the world as others see it. We look at others from our world and feel sorry or sad for them. ... Empathy is about connection. Sympathy is about separation." You learn the roadblocks to effective communication: ridiculing, criticizing, warning/threatening, telling people what they should or ought or have to do, commanding, starting your sentences with the phrases "do you realize?" or "At least...", interrogating, giving unsolicited advice, I could go on. You learn what distorted thoughts are and why they are maladaptive.

And then you have to decide: do I learn these things and only use them professionally? Or do I learn these things, use them to discern what in my life needs improvement and proceed to make the necessary changes?

Growth -- be it physical, professional or personal -- is uncomfortable. For personal growth, we are required to step outside our comfort zones, to stretch ourselves, to push ourselves. We have to dig deep inside -- deeper than we've looked before -- and uncover what we've always kept covered, shine some light on we have otherwise always kept in the dark. Sometimes, we have to acknowledge what we've always avoided acknowledging. Other times, we have to acknowledge what we didn't even realize we weren't acknowledging. And it's hard work, and it's painful, and uncomfortable.

But you know what? It's exactly what one day we'll ask our clients to do. It is part of the process we will facilitate for them when they are the clients and we are therapists. How good can we be at that if we have never known it ourselves? I don't remember exactly when, but at some point in the course of taking classes toward this master's, it dawned on me that for people in our field, while to grow personally is valuable in and of itself, to grow personally is also to grow professionally. You do the former, and you will do the latter. Period.

Arleen is six classes away from her MA in rehabilitation and mental health counseling. Check out her blog at http://arleenspenceley.blogspot.com.