Pain and suffering exists in the world to the degree that most of us have joined the helping professions because we feel compelled to act, especially in light of our own wounds. Yet, rarely do we stop to ask in a more global sense, “What is an appropriate response to pain and suffering, both our own and that of our clients/the world?” Without asking this question, we will tend to resolve/fix people, and/or resolve/fix their most immediate crises without helping them to deconstruct and interrupt the larger patterns, ironically binding them to the problem henceforward. This is erroneous primarily because “We shouldn’t try to get rid of our own pain until we’ve learned what it has to teach. When we can hold our pain consciously and trustfully (and not project it elsewhere), we find ourselves in a very special liminal space. Here we are open to learning and breaking through to a much deeper level of…consciousness” (Rohr, 2016, 199). As such, at Change, Inc., the purpose of counseling is not to simply resolve pain and suffering, but to help ourselves and our clients develop a tolerance for its inevitability, ultimately with the goal of learning from it and transforming it into the essence of our lived experience and being.

Counselors typically become counselors as an outgrowth of their own wounds. Most often, these wounds “involve lingering struggles with early loss or unfulfilled narcissistic needs for recognition and approval (Barnett, 2007; Kuchuck, 2014)” (Kottler, 2017). While we may become healed, enlightened, integrated, highly-functional individuals, this is in no way guaranteed, and many counselors are still actively dysfunctional, impaired, and at times, pathological in part or in whole.  As such, at Change, Inc., self-evaluation, as well as personal and professional growth is ongoing, emphasized in the ways we engage continuing education opportunities and group experiences.

“The person of the counselor is the primary instrument of diagnosis and treatment. It is through the clarity and stability of our own personal functioning that we work to establish and maintain meaningful connections with our clients, free of biases, distortions, and self-indulgence” (Neace & Kottler, 2017). As such, at Change, Inc., the primary emphasis around clinical fitness in supervision and the overarching environment is on the psychological wellbeing and growth of the person of the counselor (as opposed to exclusively the “professional” per se). 

Counselor education programs aim to provide counselors-in-training with the beginnings of the necessary clinical, professional, and personal skillsets required for successful careers as counselors. Yet, current educational standards within programs do not generally require that students complete coursework in the business-related aspects of professional counseling (CACREP, 2016).   Ironically, more practitioners are currently in private practice than any other single sector of our workforce (ACA, 2014). It is not surprising that many counseling practices are among the more than half of US small businesses which fail in 4 years or less (Knaup & Piazza, 2007). To avoid this pitfall, it is essential that practices “must balance other considerations with the practical concerns of fiscal management” (Baker, Smith, & Sharpe, 2016, p.136). As such, at Change, Inc., we endeavor to embody thorough, reasonable, and successful business methods in keeping with the generally accept standards of excellence that one would expect to find at any other successful business in any other discipline.