Why counsellors are prone to burnout – and how to combat it

Are you familiar with this feeling? The reserves of your mind are completely depleted; your body refuses to budge. A small task feels gargantuan, and you feel like you might snap at any student, parent or colleague who approaches you with a reasonable request – or just stare at them blankly.

Too many of us have probably felt like this. I definitely have. That feeling is burnout.

Resulting from chronic workplace stress, burnout is characterised by feelings of exhaustion, increased mental distance from your job and reduced efficiency. 

Despite some similarities to depression, such as deflated mood, low energy and loss of interest in what’s going on around you, burnout is not depression. A more detailed examination of the differences between the two can be found in this article. Simply put, the key difference between the two is that burnout, an occupational phenomenon, can be eased with rest and time off. But depression, a medical condition, requires treatment through therapy or medication. 

It is frequently documented in scientific literature that individuals in helping professions experience burnout more frequently than those in other roles. Such professions include therapists, teachers and social workers – and I believe that college counsellors should be included in this list, too.

Why helping professions lead to burnout

Why do helping professionals encounter burnout more frequently?

Helping professions tend to involve work that is emotionally demanding and draining, as well as a focus on the “other”, whether that is a client or a student. This, combined with the usual characteristics of individuals drawn to helping professions – sensitive, humanitarian, sympathetic – makes burnout almost inevitable.

Individual differences contribute as well. People who set unrealistically high goals are self-punitive if they fail to achieve these goals. And those who score high on other aspects of neuroticism are more prone to burnout. 

The following organisational factors are known to cause stress, and may be commonly found in the workplaces of helping professionals – such as a college counsellor’s school:

• role or case overload
• lack of training and orientation specific to the job
• institutional disregard for needs of clients and students in favour of administrative, financial or bureaucratic needs
• inadequate leadership or supervision (especially if one is in a single-counsellor office)
• majority of time spent on administration and paperwork

There is a plethora of insightful articles on burnout in more specific helping professions, such as teaching and therapy, but this is not yet the case for college counselling. However, one can spot unique aspects to the profession that may be linked with burnout. 

Why college counselling can lead to burnout

Because there is no clear path or mandated training to becoming a college counsellor – compared with the more clearly laid out track for other helping professions such as teaching or therapy (a gap that THE CAP is filling) – it is easier to feel lost when you are starting out in your career.

There is always something new to learn. Whether you are trying to comprehend the nuances of an application system, a specific university requirement or how a national update applies to your students’ applications, the amount of learning (and then application of that knowledge) can be exciting – but also stressful.

The extent to which you can support a single student as a college counsellor is not clearly delineated. If you are emotionally invested and boundaries are not clearly set up, it is very easy to spend a lot of time on all your cases. 

Counsellors wear many hats, and it’s possible that nobody – even yourself – fully grasps the extent of the work that you do. This is likely to be exacerbated in a single-counsellor office.

College counselling is a high-stakes job, with universities often representing a child’s (and a family’s) future, dreams and hopes. Cue intensified stress among students and parents.

And college counselling involves an unusually high number of stakeholders. This implies a higher load of stress for introverted individuals.

Our work is often measured by offers students receive, whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, there is great uncertainty over the return on investment of our efforts (notwithstanding the students’ efforts over four years of high school), particularly with applications to highly selective schools. And uncertainty is always stressful.

Tips to combat burnout

Having acknowledged that college counsellors might be at a higher risk for burnout, what can we do?

Raising self-awareness

First, there is a simple online test you can take to assess your burnout level.

Second, did you know that burnout comes in 12 stages? Looking at the stages can help you to identify where you are at if you are currently experiencing burnout.

General tips for combating burnout

There is already an abundance of articles on how to combat burnout, so here are a few select ones.   

First advice is always: rest, well and fully, in whatever way works best for you. Use your built-in breaks in the school calendar. If you truly need the full break, don’t use it to visit universities (even though you may be really tempted). Here is a rest quiz and an article about different types of rest.

Honour downtime between meetings. When we see downtime, the temptation may be to immediately fill it with the next seemingly pressing thing, but simply taking a break and acknowledging what you did may actually be a better idea. The aim is to be less reactive and more responsive.

Enrich your life beyond work. Life enrichment mediates work stress, and although our work can be incredibly enriching, many things beyond work are and should be fulfilling, too.

Counsellor-specific strategies for tackling burnout

The following strategies directly address the stress points often found in college counselling.

Practise imposing boundaries, whether it’s putting a limit on the number of meetings in a day, being clear what time your work starts and ends, or choosing carefully which tasks you take on and what hats you wear. Even though new tasks may feel really exciting in the moment, and fulfilling in the long run, we have limited resources and time as human beings. So pace yourself, and prioritise.

Take account of what your job fully entails, then talk to your manager and advocate for a reasonable workload. Imposing boundaries around when and how many meetings you hold each day is unlikely to be effective if you have an unmanageably large number of essential tasks on your plate. Other members in the school may have a difficult time grasping the extent of your role because it is quite unique, so advocacy and visibility are key.

Combat perfectionism. College counselling can be done in so many ways, and it’s easy to feel that you’re not doing enough for your students when you look at others’ seemingly perfect achievements and college counselling curricula.

Limit your time on social media. LinkedIn can be a wonderful source of inspiration, but possibly also a blow to mental health, so limit your consumption of it, if need be. We all have different capacities and environmental restrictions. Part of my own personal battle with perfectionism was acknowledging that the fact I’m there for the students in my current capacity is already enough.

Celebrate achievements. What we have that other helping professions don’t is a clear and concrete sense of achievement: student offers. This can have a buffering effect against burnout – so celebrate it fully.

Find a community, especially if you’re a single-counsellor office. Humans are social creatures so it makes sense that meaningful, fulfilling relationships are effective buffers for mental health.

Acknowledge that you won’t learn everything all at once. As a college counsellor, your job is not to be an expert on all things university but to be there for the students, so you can figure things out together.

Acknowledge vulnerabilities, alongside celebrating achievements – part of which involves admitting that you’re burning out – and ask for help. Celebrating achievements can make us feel great, but accepting vulnerabilities can help ourselves and others breathe a little more.

And perhaps that’s all we need – more space to breathe, every day.