School counsellors, teachers, and other professionals in helping fields spend their days holding space for others, sometimes at the expense of their own mental health.

Even though you may be trained to work with the mental health of others, it can be all too easy to overlook your own. In this practical post, we’re going to discuss the state of affairs for school counsellors, cover ways to recognize signs of distress, and provide practical strategies to sustain your work without losing yourself in it.

Spread Thin

Counsellors are an integral part of school communities, and yet they are spread thin across Canada. The student-to-counsellor ratio varies according to province but is consistently above recommended levels. In BC public schools, for example, it is reported that there is an average of 1 counsellor for every 693 students (Collie, 2019). For reference, the ratio 1:250 is advocated for by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) for optimal service.

Heavy caseloads are only part of the picture. School counsellors are on the front lines when it comes to engaging with youth, providing academic, social and emotional guidance. They wear many hats, splitting time between social and emotional support and college and career planning.

Research shows that they also experience excessive administrative duties and role ambiguity from being assigned non-counselling tasks, meaning these professionals are pulled in several directions at once, which causes occupational identity issues and a higher risk of burnout (Hamelin et al., 2023). Add to that the rising rate of mental disorders among youth, and it’s no wonder that many counsellors find themselves approaching their limits.

Warning Signs of Reaching Capacity

This is a field that demands deep emotional labour while dealing with systemic pressures. Chronic workplace stress can place counsellors at risk of burnout and impairment, so it is important to keep an eye out for indications of distress, including:

• Physical Signs such as chronic fatigue, low energy, difficulty sleeping, headaches, and unexplained weight loss or gain
• Emotional Signs like detachment, irritability, cynicism, dread and emotional fatigue
• Behavioural Signs like withdrawing socially and overidentifying with students’ problems

It can be helpful to distinguish between burnout, compassion fatigue, and self-neglect. Burnout can feel like a chronic exhaustion tied to workplace demands, whereas compassion fatigue is an inner depletion after caring for others and being continuously exposed to trauma. Self-neglect happens when you place your needs at the bottom of the list of priorities and leads to overlooking basic self-care. Understanding which source of stress you are experiencing can help you target the right solution.

Practical Strategies for Building Resilience

Recognizing that you’re not feeling okay doesn’t have to mean making huge changes or sweeping gestures. Sometimes it is enough to focus on simple, practical strategies to ensure that your mental health stays a priority rather than an afterthought.

• Maintain Professional Boundaries

Effective boundary-setting is an essential aspect of working in a care-related field. Some ways to set deliberate boundaries include limiting your client contact hours and leaving your job in the office whenever you can. Try intentionally defining ‘work mode’ as opposed to free time and clearly communicating your availability around the two.

It is also important to maintain emotional boundaries with your students, cultivate a healthy degree of detachment, regulate your emotions, and monitor your response when dealing with particularly heavy topics.

Another aspect is setting systemic boundaries such as advocating for realistic caseloads and role transparency. If there is any confusion over what your job description entails and what you are sustainably able to offer, initiate conversations with your team to get better clarity.

• Lean on Networks

Isolation can exacerbate mental health challenges, so try to establish and rely on a professional support system and community connections to help yourself thrive in this career.

This could look like reaching out for supervision to talk through difficult cases with another professional, enrolling in continuing education programs, or connecting to relevant national networks like the school counsellors chapter of the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA).

• Prioritize Self-Care

Research shows that counsellors who can prioritize their own wellbeing provide more effective care and maintain longer and more fulfilling careers (Posluns & Gall, 2020). It is essential to have proactive self-care strategies and continue making small and consistent changes to build resilience to the challenges of the role.

This could be as simple as ensuring you are always meeting your basic needs, making sleep, movement and adequate nutrition non-negotiables. For more inspiration, you can also dig into the six areas of self-care (physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, relational and professional), researched by Lori D. Butler and colleagues in 2019, to help ensure you are filling your cup in all of these dimensions.

• Connect to Available Resources

You don’t have to build resilience from scratch; try tapping into pre-existing tools that are designed to help. Our charity provides evidence-informed, classroom-ready resources, like the Student Mental Health Toolkit, which is full of practical support for school counsellors, teachers, parents and children.

Our organization also provides downloadable resources specifically for school staff, covering everything from burnout and trauma to after-work decompression routines, mindfulness and tips for developing a good work-life balance.

There are also lesson plans, virtual presentations and other tools to bring mental health literacy into classrooms and onto curricula, which can help destigmatize mental illness and raise awareness, empowering youth and taking a load off school counsellors and other staff.

Together We Are Stronger

Sustainable helping requires self-sustaining helpers. Counsellors, teachers and support professionals deserve the same level of care that they generously offer others. It is well known that one cannot pour from an empty cup, so please make your well-being the foundation of the change you’re trying to create.

At the Stigma-Free Mental Health Society, we believe that resilience is built through community, education, and access to the right tools, and we are proud to support our school professionals. If you have any questions, please reach out to our team anytime. We’re here to help.

Sources

Butler, L. D., Mercer, K. A., McClain-Meeder, K., Horne, D. M., & Dudley, M. (2019). Six domains of self-care: Attending to the whole person. Journal of human behavior in the social environment, 29(1), 107-124.

Collie, M. (2019, September 24). Canadian school counsellors are stretched thin — and it’s our students that suffer. Retrieved from Global News

Hamelin, G., Viviers, S., Litalien, D., & Boulet, J. (2023). Bringing light to school counselors’ burnout: The role of occupational identity suffering. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 23(3), 741-761.

Posluns, K., & Gall, T. L. (2020). Dear mental health practitioners, take care of yourselves: A literature review on self-care. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 42(1), 1-20.