How experienced counseling psychologists settle their bodies and souls: When working with child and adolescent’s difficult clients

The purpose of this research was to explore how child counseling psychologists cope with difficult clients and take care of themselves. The grounded theory which followed the constructivism paradigm was adopted in the study. Data were collected by semi-structured individual in-depth interviews.Twelve experienced counseling psychologists (10 females and 2 males, age 40-59, mean age = 45.7) voluntarily participated in the study, with mean counseling experience of 18.8 years, and mean child and adolescent counseling experience of 11.8 years. The findings indicated that two major approacheswere applied byexperienced counseling psychologists for physical and emotional self-care: (a) life philosophy, and (b) religion or spirituality. The research study also found that a psychologist’s clinical difficulties and his/her self-careexperiences were connected with and affected by his/her personal and professional life transitions. Detailed results and suggestions for further research and practice were discussed.