TPC Journal V7, Issue 4 - FULL ISSUE

310 The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 4 Idealism to Realism      Transformational model of PID task. Participant responses revealed a pattern of adopting an idealistic perspective of the counseling process or outcomes, as well as unrealistic expectations of the counseling workplace. Responses demonstrated that some novice counselor trainees believed their roles were to “fix” or “save” their clients. For example, one participant at youth and family services noted, “a lot of the kids I have seen have been raped or sexually abused, neglected, abandoned. . . . I want to save every kid and I want to take every one of them home with me because I can feed them.” Other participants demonstrated having unrealistic expectations about the counseling workplace. Among responses collected, many participants defined counseling as “sitting there and listening to people” and noted beginning their internships with an idealistic perspective. For example, a female participant working with an inpatient psychiatric hospital stated, “Before, you have this idea of a counselor, sitting in a room with books around you and asking, ‘How do you feel about that?’” Many participants began with idealistic perspectives of their clinical skills and transitioned to more realistic expectations. For example, one female participant from a youth and family agency indicated that she had not anticipated the need to develop skills in helping, communicating, and connecting with parents prior to her internship, but had developed a more realistic expectation of her role in working with the parents of her clients. Impact of mindfulness. Participants’ openness, awareness, and acceptance of experience are instrumental in the facilitation of realism in PID. Through an openness to experience in their internships, these novice counselors began to note a transition in their conception of the profession. Specifically, participants demonstrated attention to the here-and-now while engaging in their clinical experience, thereby allowing their understanding of the profession to be malleable to their therapeutic practice. One female participant from a youth and family agency noted that attending to the moment, rather than overpreparing, allowed her to remain open and flexible in her work with clients. Additionally, the participant stated mindfulness helped her with “being okay with not being okay . . . being more aware of my own feelings, accepting [clients] more, and dealing with [clients] in a better way than I normally would have.” Furthermore, the participants were open to and accepted their experiences as opposed to rejecting their experiences because they did not fit with their pre-existing perception. Through the acceptance of their experiences, participants were able to begin to broaden their definition of counseling to a more realistic view. For example, a male participant from a low-income community agency noted, “we integrate counseling along with some aspects of basic-level social work case management; sometimes we are doing advocacy, sometimes we are doing a multitude of other things where counseling skills are helpful, but the counseling is not your direct . . . objective.” Separation to Integration      Transformational model of PID task. With regard to separation to integration, participants at the beginning stages of training often viewed their professional identity as a separate entity from their personal identity. Many participants reported sustained effort in keeping their professional and personal identities separate when beginning their internship. For example, one participant reported “learning that it’s [her] identity as a counselor and not who [she is] as a person,” and further reported concerns about “bringing everything back home with [her] at the end of the day.” In contrast, participants at the later stages of their training often perceived their professional and personal identity as one and the same. In this study, four of the six participants noted that their personal and professional identities are intertwined. For example, one male participant at a university counseling center stated, “I feel like I identify a lot with that [counselor] role. Sometimes it’s . . . hard to differentiate