You are to write a 'personal awareness" paper exploring how your family history, individual motivations, values, cultural background and personal characteristics have influenced who you are today and how they potentially might impact your performance as a health counselor, both positively and negatively. This might include experiences with trauma, migration or immigration, religious and cultural beliefs, family and other relationships, loss, success, mentors and other factors, just to mention a few. In order to be able to help others to change their behaviors, you need to understand the characteristics of a good counselor and to be able to evaluate your own potential in light of these characteristics.
a) What strengths are you bringing to the counseling process?
b) How have you come to develop these strengths?
c) In what circumstances have you observed that you have these strengths?
d) What feedback, if any, have you gotten from others about them?
e) What makes you think they will serve you well in the counseling process?
On the other hand, which of your characteristics are potentially problematic? How have they been problematic in the past? Describe those situations and issues that make you uncomfortable (e.g. anger, tears, etc.) Such issues may also relate to characteristics in your client (e.g. political differences), client circumstances (e.g. helplessness in the face of a terminal diagnosis) or may be inherent in the setting/environment (e.g. working in a locked hospital unit.) Most importantly, for those issues that you've identified as potential difficuities, how are you planning to address them? Demonstrate that you have examined some of the literature pertaining to characteristics of counselors and how these influence patient outcomes. Discuss how these relate to what you are describing in yourseif. Be sure to include appropriate footnotes and references following APA format. (But keep in mind this paper is really about you, and these references are just a small component. DO NOT WRITE A PAPER ABOUT THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD COUNSELORS.)
