TPC Journal Volume 11 Issue 2

166 The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 2 VG in an effort to differentiate the experiences for CITs. Countertransference —a counselor’s emotional, cognitive, or behavioral reactions that occur in response to the client or clinical content and are rooted in the counselor’s own life and relational experiences (Bernard & Goodyear, 2019; Hayes et al., 2011)—can be understood as distinct from VG, which, adapted from the vicarious trauma literature, is the response to the loss-oriented client material unrelated to personal experiences (Trippany et al., 2004). Although countertransference may also occur for a CIT as it relates to loss and grief, the literature supports the likelihood that as clients experience existential crises of meaning around loss, professional helpers are likely to share in the existential challenges, including the experience of VG (Chan & Tin, 2012). It is beneficial for doctoral student supervisors to support CITs in making this distinction, as each may require different attention within the supervision process. The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a surge of global loss, grief, and trauma, increasing the likelihood of supervisors and CITs encountering VG in supervision. Generally speaking, it is important and necessary for doctoral students to attend to the previously mentioned tasks of supporting CITs who may encounter VG, while recognizing the likelihood of a parallel process between supervision and the trainee’s clinical work (Bernard & Goodyear, 2019). Just as it can be hard for a CIT to manage responses to grief, so too may it be challenging for a new supervisor to cope without thorough discussion of loss and grief topics in supervision. Given the current widespread and collective grief specific to COVID-19, and the ubiquity of loss and grief in general, we recommend that counselor education programs help doctoral student supervisors to become more aware of the potential for VG to emerge in supervision. Strategies may include introducing case studies of VG in supervision to support doctoral students in applying strategies and exploring the impacts for themselves and their CITs. Implications for Training: Doctoral Student Curricular Preparation A review of the existing literature revealed that there is both minimal research and limited curricular focus on loss and grief education in the profession of counseling (Doughty Horn et al., 2013). Although this conversation has largely focused on master’s-level curricula, it is important to consider the impact of this lack of focus within doctoral education as well. Counselor education doctoral students, lacking education on clinical competencies in loss and grief from within their master’s programs, are preparing themselves to become educators of the next generation of counselors. Therefore, it is imperative that we rectify this lack of competency around loss and grief in order to best meet the moral and ethical obligation of counselors and counselor educators to promote and facilitate client growth both in their own clinical work and through the instruction and supervision of students’ work (Cicchetti et al., 2016). Doctoral programs, although held by CACREP (2015) standards to include training in counseling, supervision, teaching, research, and advocacy, currently have no requirement to address topics of loss and grief, including VG within these domains. In order to most effectively implement the strategies discussed above, doctoral student supervisors would benefit from more focused training, both to enhance their supervisory competencies and fill gaps within introductory counselor education. Despite the existence of master’s CACREP standards that address life span development issues, there exist no CACREP standards to date that address topics of loss and grief, including VG. Hence, in this article, we examine how VG can perhaps be incorporated into doctoral supervisory curriculum. Within counselor education doctoral programs, supervision is a core area of counselor educator education and training (CACREP, 2015). Given the ubiquity and salience of grief (Doughty Horn et al., 2013), VG is an arguably crucial phenomenon to be acknowledged and addressed by both CITs and doctoral supervisors. Hence, it is worthwhile to examine the content of courses that meet this standard.