TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 4-FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 4 275 Figure 1. Process of GCF. After media exposure to a global event and engaging in an emotional response, counselors can immediately experience GCF. Wellness and advocacy are two methods of either addressing GCF after experiencing it or through prevention to deter the experience. GCF differs from vicarious traumatization in that it does not denote permanent change in cognitive schema; rather, a counselor can experience GCF transiently and in response to significant global and communal events. Counselors experiencing GCF do so outside of clients’ presenting problems. Although no current counseling literature describes this phenomenon, Stebnicki (2007) proposed the concept of empathy fatigue , which “results from a state of emotional, mental, physical, and occupational exhaustion that occurs as the counselors’ own wounds are continually revisited by their clients’ life stories of chronic illness, disability, trauma, grief and loss” (p. 318). Whereas GCF does bear similarity to empathy fatigue, empathy fatigue remains related to an occurrence resulting from direct clinical exposure (Stebnicki, 2007), and GCF involves counselor introspection unrelated to session content. Relatedly, Bayne and Hays (2017) recently conducted a study to conceptualize the conditions of empathy within the counseling process. They developed an exploratory model of counselor empathy that acknowledges the multidimensionality of the empathic process, including the variables associated with counselor impairment. GCF proposes that counselors’ intense emotional experiences related to global concerns are associated with empathy and a desire to help those directly affected. Current events that may cause a counselor to experience GCF include politics, natural disasters, violence (including mass shootings), terrorist attacks, threats to human rights, and animal abuse. Compassion fatigue research is the best point of reference when considering the experience of GCF. Compassion fatigue manifests through physical, psychological, spiritual, and social symptoms (Lynch & Lobo, 2012), and counselors experiencing GCF also can exhibit these symptoms. However, counselors must consider the source of their feelings of fatigue. For example, Coetzee and Klopper (2010) noted, “compassion fatigue is caused by the prolonged, intense, and continuous care of patients, use of self, and exposure to stress” (p. 239). I suggest that GCF involves a similar experience, although as a result of continuous concern for other beings, a desire to help recover from or solve the issues affecting those beings, and repeated exposure to current events harming individuals on a large scale. Additionally, ACA’s Advocacy Competencies call for professional counselors to engage in systemic