The CYCLE OF CARING

Caring as the Primary Tool of Helping Professionals

In their book The Resilient Practitioner: Burnout & Compassion Fatigue Prevention & Self-Care Strategies for the Helping Professions, Skovholt and Trotter-Mathison (2016) emphasise the importance of self-awareness and self-care as essential tools for maintaining ‘the Caring Self’, which beyond method or industry, is the primary therapeutic tool of any helping professional (Sovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016, p.19).

The Importance of Self-Care for Counsellors

The Cycle of Caring is a framework which helps counsellors develop self-awareness, engage in reflective practice and maintain personal wellbeing across each stage of their journey with clients (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016).

The ability to care is essential for the counsellor to thrive in their career and support their clients, yet, repeated care-giving without adequate replenishment can lead to conditions such as burnout, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma, which deteriorate the counsellors capacity to care, placing the wellbeing of the counsellor, as well as the therapeutic outcomes for clients, in jeopardy (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016).

Although the counsellor-client relationship is by nature, a one-way dynamic of giving where the practitioner repeatedly provides care without equal care and investment being returned, replensihment of the practitioner is neccesary if sustainable and effective care is to be provided (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016).

The Four Phases

The Cycle of Caring consists of four distinct phases which characterise the journey that counsellors move through in their work with clients. These phases are:

Empathic Attachment, during which the counsellor develops rapport, understanding and trust with the client.

Active Involvement, whereby the counsellor understands what issues the client wants to work on, what tools can help and begins actively investing in the client’s objectives.

Felt Separation, which involves letting go of the bond that has been created, either on the short-term, as the therapist prepares to see another client in the day or more permanatly when the client ceases therapy, either intentionally or suddenly.

Re-Creation is the final phase, where the counsellor rests, replenishes, prepares and inspires themselves for future service.

Using The Cycle of Caring to Develop Self-Awareness

By using The Cycle of Caring framework, counsellors can recognise what phase of the cycle they are in with their clients, better understand the needs of the client and themselves at each phase and manage their energy appropriately.

During the Empathic-Attachment phase it is natural and neccesary for the counsellor to be more other-oriented as they invest in the new relationship. This phase can be more emotionally intense.

The Active-Involvement phase remains very other-oriented as the counsellor actively invests in the client’s objectives, but the counsellor has more opportunity to re-orient from the emotional intensity of the relationship, to action, gaining insight from peers and supervisers and assessing the best tools and strategies for the client’s needs.

At the Felt-Separation phase, the counsellor can take a step back from the bond with the client and turn towards themselves, nurturing any feelings of sadness and grief and nourish other relationships in their lives.

Finally, counsellors can use their awareness of being in the Re-Creation phase to give all their energy back to themselves, making time for rest, leisure, self-care and integration.

Applying awareness of the Cycle of Caring can support counsellors to nourish what Skovholt and Trotter-Mathison call “professional and personal vitality” (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016, p.xx), a state of satisfaction and wellbeing in the domains of Self of the practitioner. The Wellness Wheel (Myers et.al, 2000) pictured to the right, is another process that can help practitioners develop self-awareness of the mutliple dimensions of their lives that interact and contribute to their experience of wellbeing. From self-awareness, practitioners can then take action to balance and nourish dimensions of themselves and their lives that may be depleted.

“It is the endless Cycle of Caring, with it’s distinct phases, that makes up the life of the practitioner.”

- Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016

Reflective Practice

The Cycle of Caring framework, along with other models such as The Wellness Wheel (Myers et.al, 2000) are tools that the counsellor can use to engage in reflective practice. One benefit of reflective practice is that the counsellor engages in practices that heighten their own self-awareness and thus minimises the potential for projection of issues in their own lives onto the client (Stedmon & Rudi Dallos, 2009). One of the main aims of reflective practice is to “improve our work with clients” (Stedmon & Rudi Dallos, 2009, p.vii), by learning from and integrating previous experiences and practicing in a way that is informed by the counsellors own understanding of themselves, which is inextricable from their work (Stedmon & Rudi Dallos, 2009).

The Importance of Boundaries

Attachment skills such as connection and care are essential to the work of a counsellor as it is the quality of the relationship between client and cousnellor that greatly determines the success of therapy (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016). On the other hand, the emotional demands of the counsellor’s role can put the counsellor at risk of burnout and other conditions that deplete their personal wellness and cause the boundaries of self and other to become blurred (Skovholt and Trotter-Mathison, 2016).

Skovholt and Trotter-Mathison (2016) state there is a level of attachment between practitioner and client that is optimal in the therapeutic relationship. This optimal level enables the practitioner to “experience the world of the Other without becoming overhwlemed” (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016, p.26) and requires practitioners to be competent in both attachment skills and skills of self-other differentiation, or separateness, as well as the comlex skill of being able to modulate the levels of each according to the interacting circumstances and needs of therapist and client across time.

Conclusion

The use of self-awareness processes such as The Cycle of Caring and The Wellness Wheel can support practitioners to separate their experience from the experience of clients and maintain healthy emotional boundaries (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016). These processes help practitioners avoid the negative consequences of over-caring whilst simultaneously supporting them to actively care for their individual life and needs, which protects the welfare of both client and practitioner (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2016).

Self-reflection is also “the engine for ongoing skill development” (Stedmon & Rudi Dallos, 2009, p.118) which counsellors are obliged to return to in their goal of “improving their work with clients” (Stedmon & Rudi Dallos, 2009, p.vii) and “helping others live long and well” which Meyers et al propose to be one of the main objectives of the counsellor. In pursuit of this goal, the counsellor too must aim to live long and well themselves.

References:

Myers, J. E., Sweeney, T. J., & Witmer, J. M. (2000). The Wheel of Wellness Counseling for Wellness: A Holistic Model for Treatment Planning. Journal of Counseling & Development, 78(3), 251–266. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2000.tb01906.x

Skovholt, T. M., & Trotter-Mathison, M. (2016). The resilient practitioner: Burnout and compassion fatigue prevention and self-care strategies for the helping professions (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Stedmon, J., & Rudi Dallos. (2009). Reflective practice in psychotherapy and counselling. Mcgraw-Hill/Open University Press.

Unsplash. (n.d.). Beautiful Free Images & Pictures. Unsplash; Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/

Figure 1: Skovholt, T. M. (2005). The Cycle of Caring: A Model of Expertise in the Helping Professions. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 27(1), 82–93. https://doi.org/10.17744/mehc.27.1.mj5rcvy6c713tafw

Figure 2: Wellness Wheel Activity. (n.d.). Headspace. https://www.headspace.com/mindfulness/wellness-wheel