TPC Journal Volume 11 Issue 2

The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 2 163 has indicated training and experience in grief counseling are among the strongest predictors of grief counseling competence (Ober et al., 2012); thus, counselors who have little or no training in grief and loss may be at risk for being unable to manage clients’ grief presentations. With counselor wellness essential to providing adequate clinical services, and counselors holding an ethical obligation to be prepared to work with a variety of client presentations, including loss and grief, it is suggested that increased attention to VG serves to promote counselor wellness, clinical preparedness, and positive client outcomes (Hill et al., 2018). Although the long-term effects of our current experiences of collective, widespread grief have yet to be fully identified and understood, the immediate impact brings to the forefront the professional necessity of recognizing reactions to grief within clinical work and supervision. Sufficient evidence exists that counselors who work with clients facing issues of loss and grief are vulnerable to compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary traumatization. Best practices reflect the necessity for practitioners to attend to their emotional responses to clients presenting with these issues (Chan & Tin, 2012; Gentry, 2002; Kirchberg et al., 1998), but little empirical evidence has been established surrounding how counselors respond to discussion of loss and grief in supervision. Therefore, to promote recognition and understanding of VG, it is beneficial for counselors and counselor educators to consider the separate and distinct impacts of VG on a counselor’s work. This includes how VG can permeate into supervisory relationships—space that has traditionally been used for counselors to process and attend to their emotional reaction to clients’ presenting concerns (Bernard & Goodyear, 2019). Vicarious Grief in Supervision Although supervision is evaluative and hierarchical by nature, it can serve a “simultaneous purpose of enhancing the professional functioning” (Bernard & Goodyear, 2019, p. 9) of the CIT. When applied to loss- and grief-oriented clinical work, it may be understood to include assisting CITs in exploring how their own reactions contribute to their ability to deliver clinical services. For doctoral students in the role of supervisor, this task requires that they not only support the connection of classroom learning to clinical practice, but also promote personal reflection and growth in the service of clients. As such, in cases of clients presenting with issues of loss and grief, doctoral students can utilize supervision and the supervisory working alliance to facilitate identification and understanding of a VG response, ultimately supporting more effective clinical work. The supervision literature suggests that VG may affect counselors differently depending on their level of clinical experience. For example, more advanced clinicians have been found to experience less distress when faced with death-related client concerns (Terry et al., 1996), whereas beginning counselors, particularly those in a practicum course, rate death and loss as highly uncomfortable clinical topics to handle (Kirchberg & Neimeyer, 1991). In addition, the interplay of personal and contextual factors may exacerbate the distress that students experience when faced with these clinical topics, emphasizing the necessity of not only acquiring appropriate knowledge and skills related to grief work, but also personal awareness and competencies to manage their emotional responses (Chan & Tin, 2012; Kirchberg et al., 1998). Doctoral students must be prepared through their own education and introspective abilities to support this process for their CITs. As it presents for CITs, sufficient evidence can be derived from the loss and grief and vicarious trauma literature to suggest that client outcomes may be affected when CITs cannot adequately identify or cope with vicarious responses (ACA, n.d.; Hill et al., 2018). When experiencing VG, it may be more difficult for CITs to attend to client presentations during session and engage in pre-session planning or post-session reflection (Lonn & Haiyasoso, 2016). Without standards for grief training or practice in the