DIGEST-Volume10.4-FULL

18 TPC Digest | W hen counselor educators engage in gatekeeping practices, they may encounter emotionally intense experiences. Counselor educators should have more information about the existence, nature, consequences, and impacts of these experiences on their work, including elements of emotionally intense gatekeeping experiences. Despite literature on gatekeeping for counselor educators, less is known about how emotionally intense gatekeeping experiences impact faculty personally and professionally. Many doctoral students, beginning and seasoned counselor educators, and mental health providers have intentions of upholding their ethics and practice gatekeeping when needed. Thus, it is an imperative for doctoral students, counselor educators, and clinicians to understand how emotionally intense gatekeeping practices may arise at any time in their work. Emotionally intense gatekeeping experiences are defined as multilayered, complex, time-extended events that counselor educators identify as emotionally memorable. We discovered in the counselor education literature that emotionally intense gatekeeping experiences were described mostly as conceptual ideas or in limited terms as subcomponents of other studies on gatekeeping. Prior to this study, there was limited evidence that explored how counselor educators experience legal issues (i.e., legal proceedings and testifying in court) and the personal consequences attached to performing gatekeeping responsibilities. Our purpose was to explore and learn more about how counselor educators experience emotionally intense gatekeeping and use their insights and lessons learned to better inform future gatekeeping practices. A transcendental phenomenological methodology was used to identify and explore 11 counselor educators’ emotionally intense gatekeeping experiences. Our results indicate that counselor educators may experience emotions such as anger, sadness, frustration, and exhaustion when gatekeeping students. Additionally, most emotionally intense gatekeeping experiences can be long (i.e., multiple years from beginning to end), be unpredictable, involve multiple university personnel and faculty (e.g., appeals committees, deans, human resource representatives, provosts, presidents), and in some cases include trials with lawyers, judges, and juries. Our findings indicate that counselor educators should prepare for emotionally intense gatekeeping experiences as part of their ethical responsibilities. To be better prepared, doctoral programs should discuss and create activities to highlight the nuances of emotionally intense gatekeeping with their doctoral students. Faculty within counselor education programs should revisit their gatekeeping policies; syllabi; and relationships with deans, university lawyers, and appeals committees to understand how these various systems interact with and influence gatekeeping practices. Furthermore, clinicians, supervisors, and other mental health providers should consider how emotionally intense gatekeeping of colleagues in their respective locations may occur at any time. Finally, counselor educators with emotionally intense gatekeeping experiences should mentor and support new and inexperienced faculty who have not yet had these types of gatekeeping experiences to raise awareness and help them be better prepared. Daniel A. DeCino, PhD, NCC, LPC (Colorado), is an assistant professor at the University of South Dakota. Phillip L. Waalkes, PhD, NCC, ACS, is an assistant professor at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Amanda Dalbey, MA, graduated from the University of South Dakota with a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling. Correspondence may be addressed to Daniel DeCino, 414 E. Clark St., Vermillion, SD 57069, daniel.decino@usd.edu. Daniel A. DeCino, Phillip L. Waalkes, Amanda Dalbey “They Stay With You” Counselor Educators’ Emotionally Intense Gatekeeping Experiences