TPC-Journal-V5-Issue4

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 4 537 Through this informal assessment, Sarah discovered that Richard lacked hope in his clients’ ability to overcome their symptoms related to trauma experiences. He reported withdrawing from family and friends in addition to constantly thinking about his clients’ trauma experiences. It appeared that Richard was being negatively impacted both personally and professionally by his engagement with his clients’ trauma-related concerns. Concerned for Richard’s well-being, Sarah aimed to provide a supportive environment to help him work through his painful experiences. Sarah determined she would use the context of supervision to assess his well-being and acknowledged the potential for a referral for counseling for Richard if deemed necessary. In her interactions with Richard, Sarah continually affirmed her interest in Richard’s personal and professional development and inquired into his activity apart from work. She emphasized the collaborative aspect of supervision and created a supportive environment via the use of empathy, non-judgmental interaction and willingness to allow him to direct their discussion. Sarah formally evaluated Richard’s wellness using the 5F-Wel inventory (Myers & Sweeney, 2005). She believed that the comprehensive nature of this evaluation tool would provide Richard with an understanding of various aspects of his well-being, while also providing him with an understanding of the interconnectedness of his overall functioning. Richard was initially unsure of the shift of focus within supervision from his clients to him, but was willing to engage given his self-disclosed struggles. Sarah provided a detailed rationale for the shift, indicating her sense that Richard appeared to be significantly impacted by his work with his clients. Sarah made sure to ground the discussion in the importance of Richard’s clients receiving quality assistance, differentiating her role as his supervisor despite the personal nature of their focus on Richard. She requested that Richard be willing to share if he felt the conversation seemed too much like a counseling interaction. Evaluation and Results Richard was provided with the results of the 5F-Wel assessment (Myers & Sweeney, 2014), including a visual profile of his overall wellness. Given the results of the 5F-Wel, Richard noted that his Physical Wellness (i.e., exercise and nutrition) score was low, yet he was satisfied with the physical aspects of his life. He also noted that his Social Self (i.e., friendship and love), Coping Self (i.e., leisure, stress management, self-worth, and realistic beliefs), and aspects of his Creative Self (i.e., thinking, emotions, positive humor, work, and control) were low. He expressed satisfaction with the high score on the Essential Self domain (i.e., spirituality and gender identity). Education In their next session, Sarah and Richard discussed his wellness. Using the profile of his 5F-Wel results, she explained to Richard that all aspects of his wellness are interconnected, and a change in one domain can impact other aspects of his well-being. Despite the empirical support for the assessment, Sara explained that the results of his evaluation should be interpreted with caution as various aspects can influence the results such as his mood during the administration process, interpretation of specific items on the inventory and his understanding of the words in each item. To help Richard connect the assessment results with the self-assessment of his wellness, Sarah asked Richard to informally rate his current wellness on a scale of 1 to 10. This number was then compared to the results on the formal inventory. Richard rated his wellness as a 4. This was repeated within each area of the wellness perspective. Sarah spent the remainder of this supervision session educating Richard on aspects of his wellness using the accompanying definitions presented in the wellness profile (see Myers & Sweeney, 2011).