As counselors, we can only help clients to grow as far as we have grown. If our efforts to assist are sincere, this keeps us in the forefront of ongoing personal recovery. We must see beyond our own false self, past the wounded and the wounding parts, to our divine origin and the courage and yearning to grow therein. When we as professionals, have genuine whole identities and positive self-esteem based on deep, thorough recovery work, then we have no difficulty surrendering our personal ego focus when working with others. This allows us to give full presence, emotional attunement and openness to understanding clients as unique individuals. This means we are alert and able to halt tendencies to inappropriately project our issues or transfer dynamics of our personal relationships onto our clients. Additionally, we are able to identify and apply feedback to clients that also fits our current growth needs.

     The depth and extent of own work reminds us how necessary compassion and understanding are in promoting positive change. When we resist, minimize or deny whom others and we are, change is impossible. It is our focus on continued personal growth that primarily determines our helpfulness to others. Without personal growth, our years of education and experience allow us only superficial management of problems. For it is not so much what we say as counselors that effectively assists clients, but who we are as people and what feelings, thought, values and integrity we exhibit as we interact with those we help.

     As counselors we must give what we feel the client is prepared to receive, in order to stimulate their growth rather than incite greater defensiveness. We give our perception, information and understanding to clients. Because we have learned to see beyond defenses and false self in ourselves, we respond to the client’s true self as well as what they outwardly present. We see their strengths, gifts, hidden fears and vulnerability. We see the healthiest part of them as well as their sickness. This also helps us remain in an empathic and growth promoting role rather than an adversarial or sympathetic, codependent one.

     Counselors who absorb their client’s pain and assume responsibility for their wellness sabotage the client’s growth, create a foundation for an unhealthy hostile dependent relationship and are attempting to control others over whom we have no control. Clients lose even more self-esteem in this process. They ultimately resent the counselors despite the initial appeal of someone accepting their responsibilities for them. The false idea of the client being defective or incomplete and therefore needing an external "fix" is reinforced. In this situation, the counselor has lost the ability to be effective with clients and cannot be effective in his or her own recovery, either, because we cannot heal pain and resolve problems we’re carrying when they are not out own.

     Clarity about our own identity and boundaries, and accepting what we can and can’t change means that we respect clients rights to make their own decisions and reap the consequences, enjoy the rewards or learn from the experience. We know that God does not revoke our free will no matter what harm we’ve committed from its abuse. Furthermore, recovery tells us that we inspire growth in others through positive example rather than persuasion. All of this reminds us of the need to demonstrate appropriate patience and tolerance and place the outcome of the therapeutic relationship clearly in the hands of the client and his/her own higher power. Our part as counselor is to facilitate a safe process where clients may heal and grow if they so desire.

     For counselor to assist clients with emotional healing, we must understand the consequences of traumatic experience, chronic painful feeling and negative thinking. We examine the effects of these thighs on the client’s mental and emotional states, physical health, relationships, career, self-esteem, spirituality, and their overall outlook on life and the world. To help clients gain this insight, we as counselors, must have extensive reflection in these areas of our life. Furthermore, we must not take personal offense to the understandable hypersensitivity of clients who have unhealed trauma. Something about our appearance, manner, professional position or words may remind them of others in the pasts that were not trustworthy and harmed them. If we are able to identify and avoid imposing our own projections and transference onto clients, we can help them to understand and eventually learn to do the same.

     The ultimate goal in emotional healing is to transcend trauma, so that it no longer has any negative power in our lives. If we were sexually abuse, for example, our purpose is to transform our identity as sex or sexless objects to whole, healthy unique individuals, embrace positive feeling about our boundaries and their care taking, rediscover and love our true self and realize healthy empowerment in our life. If we were abandoned, our task is to reclaim, listen to, understand, honor and love our true self, attract others who are naturally inclined to do the same and assert boundaries with those who have noting to give or who would be toxic to us.

     Not all of the information that helps us in personal recovery and counseling comes from our minds. Our bodies store memories, hold tension and repressed feeling and speak to us in the language of physical sensations and symptoms. We also have associations, creativity, dreams, intuition, synchronicities, visions and divine guidance. Again, the more we as counselors have explored and benefited from these realms of important messages for ourselves, the more we can effectively incorporate them into the counseling process.

     The courage to face and transcend pain and trauma deepens our ability to enjoy mutually rewarding relationships with others and ourselves. It is relationship dynamics that harm us, particularly in childhood. So it is critical that we as counselors work deeply to heal ourselves. Active recovery means that we remain honest, humble, open and teachable. The dynamics between counselors and clients can either facilitate healing and growth or reinforce further confusion and negativity. No matter who we are, what our history has been and what we currently do, our purpose in life is to use all of our experiences as opportunities for learning, healing and growing.