School for School Counselors Podcast

The School Counseling Rollercoaster: 3 Secrets Every Counselor Should Know

• School for School Counselors • Episode 171

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October hits different, doesn’t it? One week you’re flying high after a student breakthrough, and the next- you’re wondering if you can even make it to Friday.

In this episode, I’m talking about the rollercoaster of school counseling: why it feels impossible to stay grounded this time of year, what’s really fueling the highs and lows, and three sanity-saving ways to keep your footing when everything around you feels like too much.

We’ll get real about the myths we’ve bought into (like thinking we’re supposed to “fix” everything or perfectly follow the ASCA model) and what it actually looks like to stay centered when the job gets heavy.

If you’ve been questioning whether you’re cut out for this work… this conversation might change how you see yourself (and the season you’re in).


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⭐️ Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us! ⭐️

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, but it's October. If you are a school counselor, you know what I mean. When I say October is crazy and it feels crazy hard. I am currently recording this podcast episode sitting in my car in the garage after 11 o'clock at night because that's where we are right now in life. And I know that you are feeling what I am saying. This week, as I'm recording this, there's been an AWS Amazon Web Services outage, which affected a ton of platforms. And a lot of the platforms that were affected were the ones that I used to produce my podcast. And so I've been working really hard to get this out into the world this week. I pride myself on getting the podcast out just about every Monday. But this week, because of the platform issues, it just wasn't happening. And so I've had to give myself some grace. I've had to do the best that I can do, which is why I'm in the garage right now getting it done, right? Because I really, really wanted to talk to you about the highs, the lows, the roller coaster of school counseling this time of year and what we can do. All right. So as you know, if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you know that I am a full-time school counselor just like you. And so I know if your school is anything like mine, you're probably seeing the same things that I'm seeing. I am seeing a lot of big behaviors come to the forefront. And we've had some here and there since school started, but now they seem more intense than ever. I'm seeing staff fatigue. The new was wearing off, right? The honeymoon period is over. And here we are in real life, and that is starting to show. The seams are unraveling, and we are starting to see the frayed edges of teachers' patients. And then we have a lot of hidden concerns that are coming out of the woodwork. Things I feel like people were maybe able to hide or kind of hold back at the start of the school year when things were exciting, the adrenaline was pumping, everything felt new. And then all of a sudden, those things are coming out front and center. And I'm starting to develop some concerns about some families, about some student situations and needs of all these folks, and just trying to figure out how I can intervene in all of these needs going on on my campus. I'll tell you, I have a ton of parent meetings going on right now, lots of parent phone calls, teachers who need just a quick minute, which ends up being 30 minutes sometimes. And then on top of all that, we're all expected to leave our work at the end of the day, go home, and somehow function as an adult, like our brains aren't completely overwhelmed and our bodies are not completely exhausted, right? And so I find this time of year I start to see school counselors throw words like overwhelmed and burnout around a lot. And a lot of school counselors start wondering things like, is this work really worth it? Am I really making the difference that I'm trying to make? Or will I even make it through the year? And then something inevitably will happen. And it'll be a good thing. You'll get a genuine thank you. You'll see a resolution for a tough student case, or maybe admin decides to defer to you in an important situation, and all of a sudden you think, okay, now we're rolling. Things might be okay. We might be able to make it. And then we slip right back into what we've been working against all along. And we fall back into that overwhelm. And you know what I mean? This cycle just repeats. I often say that schools are both the most wonderful and most dysfunctional workplaces ever conceived. And I think that our job on campuses is even a little bit more difficult because we're dealing with some things that a lot of folks on our campuses don't really get to experience. For instance, we're dealing with emotions all day long, right? Student emotions, parent emotions, staff members' emotions. They're all just swirling around us all the time. And not only are we trying to make sense of them, but we're also trying to appease, to problem solve, to find solutions. It's a lot, especially when we have all of these feelings in the mix as well. I think too, um, sometimes we feel like we would prefer to be more proactive than we are, but really we're having to be super reactive in a lot of situations, right? We don't have the ability to see into the future. So we don't know what's about to pop off. And we kind of feel chronically behind the eight ball. Like we can never get ahead of things. We're always just kind of sweeping up the mess as things go by. And then I think too, and speaking for myself here, I think we feel a lack of clarity. We have all of these responsibilities on our campus that we're expected to take care of. And we have this role confusion, right? Like, is this really my job? Is this really what I'm supposed to be doing? And why do you think this would be an appropriate job for me? We come up against a lot of people who either don't exactly know what a school counselor is supposed to do or don't really care what we're there to do. And so we do get tasked out with a lot of things that we don't really feel should be in our purview. But here they are, right? And sometimes we have to just go along to get along. And some days for that are easier than others. But then we too have these mixed signals of authority where we're kind of important when people need us or want us to do something, but we're not as important or respected when people aren't interested in what we have to offer. And so we have really weird jobs. Just gonna be straight with you. We have really interesting and strange jobs, and that requires a lot of mental energy to navigate. We have unrealistic caseloads on top of this. Most of us are running numbers way over the recommended one to 250. We have a lot of switching between micro and macro work. And I think this is something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough in school counseling, where we may be working on the micro one-on-one with a student in a crisis situation, and then all of a sudden we switch to the macro lens, tier one initiatives on our campus or something like that. And then we go back to the micro with a grieving student, and then we flip back to the macro, and it's just constantly back and forth, like a ping pong ball all day long. And people, I don't think, really understand that aspect of our work. That constant movement back and forth is really tiring. It's like mental gymnastics sometimes, right? And then if we want to be real, let's take this even a step further. And I don't want this to sound like a what's wrong with school counseling episode. That's not what my what my point is here, because there are a lot of great things about our work too. But we got to get this out in the open, right? We got to talk about it. And I want you to know that I see you, I hear you, and I know what you're struggling with because I am there too. All right. I don't ever want you to feel like you're by yourself in all of this. So back to the point. I think we tend to have a very high drive toward empathy as school counselors, but also toward perfectionism. So we want resolution for kids, but we want it done right. We want to do things by the book, and sometimes that works against us. We get so caught up in what things should be that we just can't relax into the way things are. And I'm not saying that we need to forego all the expectations of our role or the things that we know would be best for students, but sometimes we do have to be realistic and relax our own expectation, right? We can kind of beat ourselves over the head with our own set of shoulds or musts. And those are not good. Case in point, a lot of school counselors that I've seen online and talked to online are really wrapped up in following the Ask a National Model to the letter, which would be great if we all had the circumstances in place to allow us to do that. But we don't. And so we get caught up in this cycle of getting upset or angry or questioning ourselves because we're not able to maintain that standard, but they're all shoulds, right? We're not able to relax the expectation, even for just a little bit. And those choices are not always propelling us to greatness. We got to be mindful of that. And we've also got to be mindful of sliding into perfectionism disguised as care, where in our minds we're doing our utmost for students. We are working in a caring capacity, trying to make sure they have what they need to be successful and feel good about themselves, but also understanding that sometimes that can be a disguise for our own perfectionism and some of our own insecurities. I'm just gonna call it out like it is. I'm just gonna be real about this. I know we all often wonder, am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? Are people even seeing what I'm doing? And have I proved myself enough on this campus? Because nothing for nothing, if you're like me, you probably experience some of those questions and feelings every day. Even I feel it in my moment-to-moment work. I think, do the people on my campus understand what I do all day? Do they understand the value of what I bring to the table? Are they judging me? Are they talking about my role? Like, oh, it must be so nice to be the counselor and have a desk to sit at all day. Because we all know that goes on, right? We know that goes on on campuses. Back to the dysfunctional thing. Yes? So we don't need to pretend that that's not happening. So we have this tremendous pressure that's pushing down on us too, in the middle of all the other things going on. And so I think sometimes we try to overcompensate through perfectionism. And then because of all that, we tend to have some difficulty with unresolved problems. The truth is a lot of our work on campuses is around things that may not ever resolve. We would love to take care of all of our students' concerns, but realistically, we have to know that is not always gonna happen. I can tell you, I've got two big things going on on my campus right now with different students. And I know that both of those situations are never gonna come to a full resolution. I'm never going to be able to solve those for the students. And to be honest, it wears on me a little bit because, you know, we all get that lone savior frame of mind every now and again, and we want to fix it. We want to solve it. And personally, when I can't do that, I have to be really careful about how I conceptualize these situations. What stories am I telling myself about the situation? Am I telling myself that I'm the helper? Or am I telling myself that I should be the fixer? Because spoiler, we're not the fixers, right? We are here to help, we are here to facilitate, we are here to walk with, but we cannot fix all the things. But morally, emotionally, those get really heavy. So every blessed one of these things contributes to these dips that we feel in the roller coaster of school counseling. And, you know, we've kind of been chugging up towards the top. We get towards the peak, right? The top of the roller coaster, about the beginning of October, and then all of a sudden we are on the downhill slope and we hit the bottom hard, and it is jarring to the senses. You know what I'm talking about, right? It is that roller coaster of school counseling. And it's a lot because once we hit those lows, we shoot out of them, and all of a sudden we hit another high, we see a student resolution, we see them solve a problem on their own, we see them start functioning more independently or with more capability, and maybe we get a little bit of professional recognition along the way, and we start thinking, hey, maybe this isn't so bad. I actually love this work. This is what I was born to do. And then from out of nowhere, something shows up and punches you in the face and you're headed back down. And I laugh because I have been through this cycle so many times. And still, it never fails to surprise me when I hit one of those lows or when I hit one of those highs. So if you hear nothing else from me, hear this. The highs and lows of the roller coaster of school counseling is not indicative of your ability in your job. Hitting those lows does not mean that you're a terrible school counselor. Hitting the highs does not mean that you're the best there ever was. It is just the reality of the work. And I feel like if we had that conversation more in October, it would be so helpful to all of us to realize that these feelings are normal, that it's just the season of school counseling that we're in. Now, I'm not trying to excuse situations where you're being undermined or you're being misutilized on campus. I'm not making excuses for those things, right? There are some very real problems in the field of school counseling. There's no doubt about it. But we also have to realize that this sense of unease that we're feeling, these feelings of pressure, it's just all about this time of year. And it's part of the job. And so, for example, I'll tell you kind of what I've been doing in my own program. I've been trying to do my own work because again, no matter how long I've done this, October still punches me in the face. So I have recently started challenging myself to look at difficult situations, not as difficult anymore, but as interesting. And that one word has shifted things for me so much. Where when I'm standing up against something that just feels really major, it's never going to be solvable, I can support the student, but I don't see a solution. I look at it as this is interesting. What can I learn? What can I seek to teach this student in this situation that might help them down the road? Because really that's where the gold standard is anyway, right? Where we are uniquely equipped to help and we are equipping that student for future success. We are uniquely equipped to make some really big differences if we can keep the right frame of mind. So I think we have to hold on to the fact that October is October, right? And then with this roller coaster school counseling going on, we have personal life stuff as well. The seasons are changing, which messes with our rhythms and our hormones. The holidays are coming up. Lots of us are already anticipating those for better or worse. There's just a lot going on. So give yourself some grace. Give yourself some support and remember that this is a season of school counseling. It is not the be-all end-all of how it's going to be forever. I think there are a couple things you can do if you're looking for some support this time of year that might be helpful. One is you need to implement a really good system into your program. You need to have something that tells you, here's where I am, here's where I'm going, and here's the next best step. And I think a lot of school counselors feel like they're at loose ends because they don't have that kind of roadmap running through their program. Or they're chasing the wrong destination. How many times have you let yourself believe that the Ask a National Model is the only acceptable way of building a school counseling program? And that if you don't attain the standard of ramp status or school counselor of the year, that that somehow means that you're a lesser school counselor. I hope that you've never believed that. But the possibility is high that at some point in your career you bought into the fact that if you were not running a fully quote unquote comprehensive school counseling program, that you were somehow failing. I don't think that's true. I think that if you had been given the time, the latitude, the personnel, and the autonomy to implement that national model, and you still weren't able to make it work, we might need to be having a conversation. But chances are you're working with not enough budget, not enough people on your campus, overwhelming caseloads, misappropriation of your time that you didn't choose. And so you can't be held to that ideal perfect world standard. You do, however, need a roadmap. So we have in our School for School Counselors masterminds something that we call the SMART School Counseling Roadmap. SMART stands for start, move, assess, relate, and thrive. And through those five steps, we're able to determine where we are in our school counseling program and what our best next step or next initiative might be. It gives us clarity and a sense of purpose in our program instead of feeling like we're constantly putting out fires as the behavior firefighter. And that's where you probably are this time of year. You're either behavior firefighting or you're putting out college application fires right now. That's what you're doing. It is more soothing than you know to have a good system and to know which direction that you go next. So find a framework. Sit down, list some goals for your program and the steps that you need to take to get there. It doesn't have to be anything formal. You don't need a special form. Write it down on a stinking post-it note. It'll be fine. But then start working that very methodically and intentionally. That's going to give you a sense of peace. But then, second, rely on your data. Let your data help tell the story. I can't tell you how many times I have ended a day, a week, or even a month feeling like, dad gummit, I haven't accomplished a ding-dang thing. Have you been there? Like I've been flying by the seat of my pants. I've been going 100 miles an hour, but glory be, I cannot tell you what I have done. I do not feel like I have accomplished a thing. But then I go back and I look through my use of time data and go, oh, I mean, actually, I'm kind of awesome at this. I'm doing a lot of things. I'm juggling a lot of things. There are a lot of plates spinning all at the same time, but I'm keeping it relatively under control. It is a comfort to me to see the data evidence of what I've done because our emotions are not always reliable. Right? So we've got to have some sort of guidepost to let us know what we're doing and to remind us that we're really moving the needle. So you need to have a good roadmap in place for your program. You need to rely on your data as a benchmark. But then you also need to lean on your people. Find your community, find your cohort. I have found consistently over the years that the school counselors that seem to talk the most about burnout and quitting, the ones that say, I don't know if I can do this work anymore. I don't know if I was cut out for this, are the people that have no community. So we hold support and consultation chats in our mastermind community every stinking week. And these are not so that everybody can get together and vent about what's gone wrong. These are not people coming together and saying, oh my gosh, this is so terrible. This is so hard. I don't want to do this anymore. Can you believe that my principal said this or did this or anything like that? That's not what these chats are for. These chats are for constructive problem solving. They're for talking through tough cases. And I'm going to tell you, we've had a lot of them over the past couple of months where we've really had to crowdsource and get creative. But by the time we were done with these conversations, the school counselor who brought the case to the chat would say, I feel so much better. I feel like I know what I need to do next. And then they'll go try it and they'll bring the results back to us. And then we troubleshoot again if we need to. That is the power of consultation. Not having to rely just on your own brain and your own decision making, but to rely on the power of 10, 15, or 20 people standing behind you helping you call the shots so that you don't feel like you're by yourself. You feel like you have good information, you have a breadth of experience speaking for you, and you know legitimately what needs to come next. Some of our mastermind members have said this, and these are direct quotes. Before, I always did what I'd always done because it was the only way it had been done. But after joining the mastermind, I questioned things in an improvement mindset. I learned how to improve my own craft as well as our school counseling program. And now I'm genuinely happy with my career choice and going to work, even if some days are rough. That is a direct quote. Another member said, I was feeling lost as a school counselor. I didn't know where to start, but after joining the mastermind, I feel ready and prepared. I have wonderful suggestions from others, and I'm ready to begin. Isn't that awesome? And I'm not trying to turn this into a commercial for the mastermind by any stretch of the imagination. But what I am trying to impress upon you is the power of quality consultation with someone who knows how to lead that process without just barking at you or giving you advice about what they would do, right? And I'll give you one more because this is from one of our rock star members. They said, before joining the mastermind, I was constantly looking to others for the right way to do things and thinking that there were certain standards I had to follow to prove that I belonged in this profession. Does that sound familiar? Right? Okay, let me keep going. I've learned to trust my own judgment and experience to meet the needs of my students in ways that are responsive and meaningful. Being part of the mastermind helped me see that I don't just advocate for my students, but for myself too. My friend, wow, right? So find a consultative community like that. Get the support that you need to get through this crazy month of October because I promise you it never fails. It feels like a doozy every year. All right. So what I want you to remember most from this episode, I want you to remember that the highs and lows of this time of year especially are normal. And I'm gonna warn you, spoiler alert, it hits real hard again in April. So we'll be having a similar conversation once we get to April 2026. But for now, let's just focus on October. So understanding the roller coaster, relishing the highs, understanding the lows are just part of the game. Get a good framework in place for your program so you know where to go next. Utilize your data to show you the movement in your program that you can't feel, and really lean into consultation so that you don't have to feel like you're doing this by yourself, that you have an army behind you, whether that's district counselors, whether that's people on your campus, or whether that's a group like our mastermind. I'll leave a link in the show notes just in case you're interested. No pressure. But just remember the roller coaster is normal, and there's nothing wrong with you because you're going up and down, I promise. All right, it's getting really hot out here in the car in the garage in the middle of the night. So I'm gonna end this episode here, but I will be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, keep good energy around you, maintain a good perspective on the challenges of this time of year, and you're gonna do great. I promise it's gonna be great. I'll talk to you again soon. Take care.

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Steph Johnson

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