Even coaches get the blues

Image of a cat sitting and facing a woman who is sitting with her knees pulled up, and her arms around them. She is wearing yellow pants, a purple shirt with yellow specks, and a dark purple backpack. Her eyes are closed.

Some people may be under the impression that folks in the helping fields never experience mental health issues. This is not true at all! While there are, I'm sure, plenty of helping experts who don't have a diagnosis, or who have not experienced the same kinds of trauma that their clients have, no one is exempt from experiencing stress, sadness, anger, grief, frustration, and any of the other emotions humans feel and respond to on a daily basis.

Many of the people who enter into a career helping others choose to do so because of the hardships they have experienced in their own lives. They want to use their own insights to help others who might be going through similar challenges. They may have also had a powerful experience with someone who helped them through their darkest hours, and wish to pay that forward to other people in need.

When you meet with a helping professional, that person has the skills to be able to focus on what you speak with them about so that they can provide the support you need. While we may have a strong grasp of the coping tools that can help people manage their emotional experiences, that doesn't mean that we apply them perfectly in our own lives all the time, or that we don't make mistakes, and it certainly doesn't mean that we have stopped learning!

One of the main keys to managing our mental health effectively is self-awareness. The better that we understand ourselves, the better we are at responding to a variety of situations. We learn to recognize our own thought and behavior patterns, and this allows us to intervene so that we can restructure those patterns according to the goals that we have set for ourselves. Because we never stop evolving as human beings, there is always room to learn more about ourselves, and to discover new facets of our desires, needs, and emotions that provide a deeper sense of compassion and love for ourselves. Working with other people provides the bonus of being able to engage in ways that contribute to our understanding of other people and of ourselves. My clients constantly amaze and inspire me, and remind me of my own magic as well.

But we all have our off days. And we've all been going through this pandemic together. Practitioners in the helping field are experiencing the same kinds of repercussions that many people in the workforce are. It hasn't been easy, but it has made it even more vital to anyone's well-being to harness the skills and tools that help us to manage.

There is a perspective that says it is impossible to heal within the system that has caused the injury. None of us have the ability to step outside of the pandemic. Many of us cannot step away from the culture that raised us. But we can hold onto our perspective of the reality of the situation while also making space for joy. And this is what I want to emphasize here: you might be struggling, you might be experiencing an unprecedented amount of stress and exhaustion. But there are still opportunities for joy. You are allowed to feel what you feel; all your feelings are valid. But remember that you don't have to stay with them forever. Emotions also rarely exist in isolation, meaning that even when you are feeling the most intense grief, there are still other emotions happening; they just might not be as prominent. Change is inevitable, and change is often hard (especially when we didn't have any say in it). How we contribute to that change, within ourselves and beyond ourselves, is up to each of us. How we respond to our emotional experiences can make a difference in how we react in the future to similar situations. None of us deserve to live in pain.

So while helping professionals are not exempt from the same trials and tribulations that any person (some more than others) experiences as a member of an imperfect society, we are here to assist others with navigating the barrage of obstacles, emotions, opportunities, and experiences that we all face regardless. Let's talk and see what we can accomplish together.