Taking a Break for Self-Care (starts at 2.11 mins)

The BACP Ethical Framework contains a section on self-care (BACP, 2015: 13):

Care of Self as a Practitioner

We will take responsibility for our own well-being as essential to sustaining good practice by:

1. taking precautions to protect our own physical safety
2. monitoring our own psychological and physical health
3. seeking professional support and services as the need arises
4. keeping a healthy balance between our work and other aspects of life

Supervision is vital to good self-care (giving us the chance, for example, to discuss any parallel process and transference), and personal therapy can help us become more self-aware. Taking a break (doing something different) is really important too, helping us to:

• prevent burnout
• avoid letting our work define and overwhelm us
• extend our careers in counselling and psychotherapy
• remain empathic and so build good therapeutic relationships

The Jonah Complex (starts at 10.51 mins)

The Jonah complex is a human trait that was first described by American psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow was a member of the Human Potential Movement (HPM), a collaboration of likeminded psychotherapists and philosophers – also including Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls and Eric Berne – who were interested in human potential from a phenomenological viewpoint.

Maslow outlined the concept of the Jonah trait – based on his own observations – in his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (Penguin, 1976). It draws its name from the parable of ‘Jonah and the Whale’, which appears in the Bible, Quran and Torah. In this, Jonah tries to escape from God by hiding inside a whale – the message being that you cannot hide from your destiny.

Maslow applied this to human life by explaining that we each have our own barriers and defences that stop us from becoming the best we can be. In their book Person-Centred Therapy Today (Sage, 2000), Dave Mearns and Brian Thorne also describe ‘FOI’ – feelings of incompetence. We often defeat ourselves by doubting our own ability; this has also been described – by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes – as the ‘imposter syndrome’, feeling like we are about to be ‘found out’ for not being good enough.

Rory ends by reminding us of Carl Rogers’ view that what matters is to be our real selves. After all, it is the relationship we build with our clients that really makes the difference. You can read more about the Jonah complex in Rory’s handout.