38 Lessons for Counselors and Therapists: How Personal Experiences Shape Professional Growth

Every beginning counseling or therapy student realizes within the first few weeks of their training that there are major learning, growth, and significant changes that lie ahead. This does not just cover the exhaustive curricular offerings but also the incredible personal growth that often takes place through helping others deal with their demons, decisions, and difficulties.

This very personal and provocative collection of significant lessons for helping professionals reveals some of the interesting and essential changes that can take place during the life and career of a practitioner. Drawing upon his rich professional experiences as a clinician, supervisor, author, and social justice advocate, Jeffrey Kottler introduces critical topics via his own very personal and highly vulnerable stories from the field, then highlights applications to other aspects of daily life.

The 38 lessons discuss some of the ways that practitioners learn from their clients about how groups and families function (and fall apart), how to work through disappointments constructively, enhance relationships through deeper intimacy, deal with stress and trauma, increase patience, empathy, and compassion toward others, expand one's worldview to be more sensitive and responsive to diverse people, navigate interpersonal conflicts, become more forgiving of lapses and failures, and much more.

Written to inspire deep reflection and personal growth, 38 Lessons for Counselors and Therapists is an ideal resource for courses and programs in counseling, psychology, social work, and related health professions.

Jeffrey A. Kottler, Ph.D. is one of the most prominent authors in the fields of psychology, health, and education, having written over 100 books across a broad range of topics. He is professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton and resident scholar at the Alliance for Multicultural Community Service in Houston, Texas, where he works on issues related to refugee mental health and wellness.