Many consultants can easily distinguish what their careers were like before the coronavirus pandemic began and what they are now. But for most new professionals, pandemic counseling is all they know. COVID-19 has shaped almost every encounter with customers and colleagues alike. And the careers they welcomed after graduation looked dramatically different from the ones they prepared for in school.
Hannah McGrath, a graduate of Wake Forest University, North Carolina's Masters of Divinity / Arts in Counseling, always wanted to be a counselor. But as she acknowledges: "This [experience] is not what I imagined after four years in graduate school."
In March 2020, McGrath returned from spring break and found that she had to virtually end her counseling internship. Many of McGrath's customers who were college students had gone home over the spring break and not returned to campus because of the pandemic. Some of them were out of the country, which meant that she could not offer them advice. Professors and supervisors went to great lengths to ensure she had the necessary documentation to ensure the health of tele behavior and to help clients find clients so she could complete her internship hours on time.
It is difficult to predict the long-term impact of starting a career in counseling during the COVID-19 era, but McGrath and four other new professionals agreed to shed light on how the pandemic shaped them – and their future prospects of the profession – so far.
Rethinking a career as a consultant
Kathryn Beskrowni, a provisionally licensed professional counselor, was concerned about starting her new counseling career even before the pandemic hit the United States. In January 2020, she had just finished her internship at Terrace House, a group practice in St. Louis. She was concerned about leaving a steady job as a learning and development manager at College Bound St. Louis, a nonprofit that enables undergraduate students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to earn a bachelor's degree to become a consultant – a career from who she knew she would depend heavily on building a suitable fall load.
Prior to graduation, Beskrowni, a member of the American Counseling Association who specializes in relationship problems and life transitions, applied for several positions in private practices, hospitals, and other mental health organizations. After hearing nothing from anyone for over a month and a half, her career fears only solidified. "I had two months in which I didn't know what to do," remembers Beskrowni. "I had to prepare myself emotionally for this new life that I was entering."
She decided to reach out to her former intern Christina Thaier, a Licensed Professional Advisor (LPC) and the founder and director of Terrace House. Together they discussed Beskrowni's future as consultants. Through their conversations, Beskrowni realized that one of her greatest hesitations revolved around the limiting feeling of just going into therapy.
Fortunately, Thaier worked with her to create a position that took into account all of Beskrowni's goals and concerns and enabled her to grow professionally. Beskrowni joined the Terrace House team as both a therapist and assistant director of community relations (a role in which she helps oversee and recruit counseling interns).
A few weeks later, COVID-19 made its way into the US and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic re-fueled Beskrowni's career fears and concerns about financial stability. Ultimately, she decided to keep her job at College Bound St. Louis, which allowed for constant pay and hours while transitioning to her new role as a professional consultant.
She juggled both jobs for about six months, switching back and forth between her two work laptops – a privilege she had because she was able to work from home during the pandemic. “It took me a long time to feel safe and comfortable enough to fully embrace the unpredictability of a consulting career. That's why I stuck to [the nonprofit job] longer than necessary, ”says Beskrowni. But she is happy that she finally became a consultant, and she is excited about the future direction of her career.
Adjustment of career plans
Prior to the pandemic, Darius Green, a graduate of James Madison University's doctoral education program, planned to find a full-time position in consultant training. He was ready and able to move anywhere. But the pandemic has changed things. Unsure of how much the pandemic would affect college enrollment and university faculty hiring, he was concerned about the job search process and his own financial stability. "I was worried about getting a consultant training job, and if I did find one, I was worried about the risk of that position being eliminated," he says.
Green, an ACA member whose research interests include wellness, diversity, social justice, and counseling education, applied for some counseling-educator positions and even scheduled some interviews. Ultimately, however, he decided not to pursue this career path any further, as he did not feel prepared for the multi-hour virtual interviews and teacher demonstrations. Given the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, his willingness to move somewhere had dissipated.
"I originally felt ready to go almost anywhere to get my foot in the door, but the pandemic has changed my priorities and values," says Green. "My top priority was not to have a job in counseling training [anymore]. My top priority was to have a job with benefits and a stable income."
Partly for this reason, he decided to continue serving as the Assistant Coordinator of the PASS program at James Madison University (JMU), which supports the learning and success of students in challenging courses at the school. Although he applies some of his counseling skills to this position, the job itself is not counseling. As a result, he also works part-time as a consultant with the ARROW project, a community mental health organization in Staunton, Virginia.
This part-time position also brought new challenges with it. "I was nervous because I hadn't been trained in telehealth health," says Green. "I'm pretty tech-savvy, but [with telebehavioral health] there is a lot more to think about."
The pandemic caused Green to realign his career plans, but it also gave him the opportunity to work from home. This has enabled him to balance his full-time job at JMU and his role as a consultant at ARROW, which would otherwise have required a 20-minute commute.
Green is unsure whether a career in higher education is currently sustainable or achievable. So he wants to keep his options open by working towards his consulting license. He also knows that his experience as a consultant clinician will bolster his résumé if he chooses to pursue consultant training jobs later.
Growing pain
Rachel Wyrick, a graduate student in the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) was looking for an internship position when the pandemic hit the United States. Wyrick wasn't sure they would find a job with so many agencies focused on converting their practice to telebehavioral health. After a few weeks of silence, Wyrick finally got the email they'd been hoping for: Terrace House offered Wyrick a consulting internship.
Wyrick felt like he was taking her counseling step during her internship a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic. Wyrick had become more comfortable with customers, and Wyrick's initial nervousness was slowly subsiding. But when it all went virtual, Wyrick's fear shot up again. In many ways, Wyrick felt that they first had to learn how to conduct telebehavioral health therapy – something that wasn't on their radar prior to the pandemic.
Wyrick specializes in relationship issues, trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and LGBTQ + populations. With Wyrick working with traumatized clients and using somatic therapies, Wyrick had concerns about how effective telehealth would be. But Wyrick embraced the change and found they can still build strong relationships with customers virtually. In fact, Wyrick finds it more intimate in many ways. Since Wyrick is face to face with customers, he can easily read the micro-expressions on the customer's face through the screen.
"And for my counseling style, it really suits me and the populations I serve," says Wyrick, who was named UMSL Clinical Mental Health Master's Student of the Year last December. It can be comforting for clients to be in their own space and see their advisor as a “real” person in their own space, explains Wyrick. Wyrick notes that customers who ask about Wyrick's plants or artwork in the background often want to create a stronger connection.
Wyrick still oscillates between weeks feeling connected with customers and weeks feeling insecure and inappropriateness. "Is it always going to feel like this, or is this a normal part of the process of growing as a professional?" Wyrick wonders. Wyrick didn't have much hands-on experience outside of the pandemic, so it is difficult for the advisor in training to know what might be unique to the pandemic and what are just typical growing pains.
Difficulties in looking for work
After moving to New York, McGrath noticed that there were more jobs for social workers than for counselors. It was then that she learned that some states privilege different mental health workers. Social workers in New York have a longer history than licensed professional counselors and, in turn, more job opportunities. Many of the types of jobs that McGrath had assumed would be open to her – as a counselor in a hospital, for example – weren't.
McGrath applied to every consulting job she could find, but many of the places didn't respond or tell her they only hired fully licensed consultants. "I felt like I had no job opportunities," she says. The fact that New York City had to close because of the pandemic did not help, she said. Nothing was as usual.
Finally, in June, she found a job with a care authority as a temporary permit for psychosocial counselors.
Looking back, McGrath realizes that the pandemic has increased her fear of looking for work. She felt panic and the urgency to find a job. If she could do it all over again, she would slow down and take her time during the process.
During graduate school, a guest speaker said to McGrath, "Your first job doesn't have to be a perfect job, but he can be the perfect teacher." She takes this advice to heart as she pursues her counseling career at an uncertain and challenging time .
Construction of a drop load
After graduating with a Masters in Counseling from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in the Spring of 2020, Mika Smith-Tjahja, now LPC employee at Firefly Therapy Austin in Texas, was putting great pressure on herself to immediately start building her case load. "I was tough on myself at first," she recalls. "I had high expectations of getting a certain number of customers each week." When that didn't happen, she felt discouraged.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Smith-Tjahja had an average of one to three clients per week for about two months. Her manager reminded her that it takes a while to find customers and she trusted the process. Smith-Tjahja's case number has doubled since then, but is still below the average number of customers she aims to reach per week. She recently accepted a second counseling center at Connected Heart Therapy in Austin and hopes this will expand her customer base even further.
Smith-Tjahja, who specializes in anxiety, depression and trauma, wonders how much the pandemic has affected her ability to build a case load. Some referrals have told her that they'd better wait for personal therapy to resume so she knows that this is a factor.
Smith-Tjahja has started to think outside the box in order to find people who just need help. She joined a Facebook group for mental health professionals in Austin to share and solicit referrals. She found the group to be a great resource for both referrals and networking.
She also suggested the idea to her superior to set up an inexpensive closed counseling group for people who are interested in therapy but cannot afford the higher fees. The group would benefit the community while teaching Smith-Tjahja more about the counseling needs of the community and informing others that she is available and helpful, she explains. Smith-Tjahja is also interested in volunteering in the future once she feels more solid in her role as a professional advisor.
Finding support in the midst of isolation
Smith-Tjahja says her biggest challenge during the pandemic was isolation, especially because she was unable to interact with colleagues in person. She imagined trading her school cohort for colleagues in an office or hospital. Instead, she works from home alone. Since this sense of community no longer exists, she founded her own virtual community – a self-help group for LPC employees like her. When she searched on social media for others to join her group, she was surprised by the response: More than 50 people joined. You meet once a month and recently invited an auditor to explain how to manage taxes for your own private practice.
She also reached out to her previous cohort and formed a peer support group. When they last met, they all echoed Smith-Tjahja's sense of isolation and agreed that they needed this group because they had missed the sense of community it offered.
McGrath acknowledges that connecting with other mental health professionals right now can be difficult. She communicates with her colleagues through emails and phone calls. Sometimes, she says, if she doesn't get an answer within a few days, she wonders if her colleagues are busy, if they ignore her, or if they think she is a bad therapist.
Wyrick also admits that it is easy to get into self-doubt, especially when everyone is isolated from one another. Terrace House's internship program seeks to solve this problem by matching new professionals with other new professionals who are a few months or years into their careers. Wyrick benefited from a mentor during her internship at Terrace House. Wyrick had virtual coffee appointments with his mentor in what appeared to be an interaction in the office.
Monitoring is also critical. "It's hard to know where you are now as a new professional," says Wyrick. "It is really helpful when an experienced professional thinks about what he sees – whether it is about strengths or growing edges."
"Ordinarily we would have these [professional] peer-to-peer experiences and compare … and they all develop together," continues Wyrick. "Without that, our supervisors are our main source of reflection and confirmation … about how tough this experience was and what strength we showed."
Green encourages consultants to remember that not everyone comes from a privileged background and has the same opportunities and resources. Therefore, it is important for established advisors to reach out and support new professionals, especially as they try to gain a foothold amid an ongoing pandemic, he says.
Professional relationships provide not only career opportunities, but also emotional and social support, notes Green, a member of the Association for Humanist Counseling and Social Justice Advisors, which are divisions of ACA. People are less inclined to reach out virtually so it can be isolating at times, he points out. He had several mentors schedule virtual meetings in the fall, but those meetings slowly waned over the months that followed. Green tries to lead by example by taking the time to message his colleagues and other new professionals.
After the pandemic, McGrath looks forward to meeting her colleagues in person and building working relationships that will help her grow professionally. She wishes she could just walk into a coworker's office and ask a question or talk about her week. But until that is possible, she advises her new peers to make an effort to connect with other mental health professionals in every possible way.
Establishing working limits
Working from home has blurred the line between work and personal life for many new (and experienced) professionals. As McGrath points out, it is often difficult for consultants to set working hours when they see clients six days a week. "The longer the pandemic lasts, the harder it is to meet these limits," she adds.
"Setting working limits is already a struggle for new skilled workers," says Wyrick. The pandemic only adds to this problem. Wyrick's work area is in the bedroom, so emails can be answered at any time of the day. Wyrick points out that it is also tempting to attract customers outside of scheduled working hours. Wyrick often thinks, "What's one more hour?"
Wyrick had to create a routine because his partner is a professor who also works from home. When Wyrick is working, they close the door and turn on a white noise machine. This signals Wyrick's partner not to interrupt.
Green says the amount of emails he receives appears to have increased during the pandemic. It's often overwhelming, he admits, and he spends a lot of time sorting and prioritizing these messages. Smith-Tjahja is constantly checking her email as she's trying to build her clientele. She hopes to have a better schedule for checking and replying to emails after she has more customers.
Wyrick says that working from home taught them a lot about their personal work patterns and values. Before the pandemic, Wyrick took pride in always being connected, but now they are realizing that the mindset does not match their values.
“At the beginning of this [pandemic] we had no idea how long it was going to take and our optimists thought it would be a short time. Things could get a bit chaotic and wild at first, ”says Wyrick. "I put a lot of thought into Emergency Go mode, but now I'm trying very hard to develop habits that will last over time."
Finding an opportunity in chaos
Smith-Tjahja experienced several significant events in her life in 2020, which, however, looked different due to the pandemic. She graduated with a Masters in Counseling, but the ceremony was virtual. She got married, but it wasn't the ceremony she had hoped for. She and her husband bought her first house, but her parents couldn't go to see houses with her. Smith-Tjahja is happy about these milestones, but also about a feeling of sadness at the same time, as these events did not follow the traditional path that she expected.
The pandemic also opened up new career opportunities for her. A year ago, Smith-Tjahja assumed she would likely work in a hospital until she was admitted. Working in a private practice was a distant dream, but that dream came true this fall. After receiving her preliminary counseling license, she reached out to a counselor she had been in touch with throughout her graduation program to determine if the counselor at her private practice, Firefly Therapy Austin, needed help. The counselor offered her a job.
During the quarantine, Smith-Tjahja also decided to receive training in desensitization and reprocessing of eye movements (EMDR). She could easily attend classes from home and didn't have to spend money on travel, food or a hotel. This training opened up another career opportunity. She reached out to another counselor who had just started Connected Heart Therapy, a private practice that EMDR offers to the Austin community. They offered Smith-Tjahja a position as a part-time consultant that will enable her to continue her EMDR training.
Wyrick describes their introduction to professional advice as a trial by fire. While it wasn't the hoped-for start to Wyrick's career, it has given Wyrick confidence in her ability to rise to the challenge and her ability to grow. Wyrick hopes that the experience of practicing during a pandemic will encourage and enable new and seasoned counselors to rethink the ways in which they can deliver therapies and how they can best serve their clients.
Beskrowni points out that the uncertainty caused by the pandemic and the sudden shift to telehealth health have undone some of the traditional milestones for aspiring counselors, including completing and starting a counseling career. She hopes that other new consultants will still take the time to celebrate their successes and find a sense of freedom in their evolving opportunities.
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Lindsey Phillips is Counseling Today author and UX content strategist. Contact them at [email protected] or through their website at lindseynphillips.com.
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Opinions and statements in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to reflect the opinions of the editors or guidelines of the American Counseling Association.
