351- Provides a role model of how to counsel on psychosocial issues (e.g., using skills
and techniques your therapist used with you) - Allows you to learn to be yourself
- Helps you learn your own limits and boundaries
- Helps you learn what not to do (i.e., therapist behaviors that were not helpful for
you) - Helps you learn how to separate your own feelings from your patients’ feelings
- Helps you address issues on a deeper level with your patients
- Provides a venue for identifying and exploring transference and
countertransference - Can increase personal resilience. “The antithesis of compassion fatigue and
burnout is resilience...[Resilience] involves several important core elements:
self-knowledge and insight; sense of hope; healthy coping styles; strong relation-
ships; personal perspective; and a sense of greater purpose and meaning” (Peters
2010, p. 326).
13.6 Closing Comments
The counseling dynamics discussed in this chapter are common occurrences. You
are not the only one to have a countertransference reaction or to feel distress, burn-
out, or compassion fatigue; and you are not odd or incompetent because of these
experiences. The worst thing you can do is pretend you are not experiencing one or
more of these phenomena. Unacknowledged, they will only get worse. The best
thing you can do is to be proactive—recognize and reflect upon what is going on;
deal with the issue by consulting with others, a supervisor, a professor, a genetic
counselor, and peers; and proactively build and maintain effective coping strategies.
These actions will assist you in “thriving” as opposed to “surviving” in your work
and throughout your career.
13.7 Class Activities
Activity 1: Transference (Think-Pair- Share Dyad Discussion)
Students discuss the following situation: Your patient expresses unrealistic expecta-
tions about what you should be able to do for her. She tells you that you should be
able to test for everything possible to guarantee her baby will be ok and that if you
cared more about her situation, you would tell her what she should do if abnormal
test results come back.
- How would you deal with her unrealistic expectations?
- Would you try convincing her that her demands are unrealistic? How would you
do this?
12.6 Class Activities