School for School Counselors Podcast

Why School Counselors Feel Like They’re Failing (Even When They’re Not)

• Episode 154

Share episode

Still feeling unsure- even with experience under your belt? This episode explains why doubt might be the best sign you’re doing the job well, not a reason to second-guess yourself.

In this episode, we’re pulling back the curtain on what that uncertainty in school counseling really means. We’ll talk about the invisible labor of school counseling, what the research says about feedback-poor environments, and how self-doubt often shows up right when your skills are leveling up.

You’ll learn:

  • Why experienced counselors question themselves more, not less
  • How silence and lack of validation chip away at even the strongest counselors
  • Why messy, imperfect work is often the most effective
  • And how to chase credibility instead of certainty

You’re not failing; you’re growing. And you’re not alone.


Mentioned in this episode:

School for School Counselors Mastermind

Free School Counselor Planner


References:

Culbreth, J. R., Scarborough, J. L., Banks‑Johnson, S. B., & Solomon, T. (2005). Role stress among practicing school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 9(2), 106–112. 

Dunning, D., & Kruger, J. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. 

Falender, C. A., & Shafranske, E. P. (2010). Psychotherapy‑based supervision models in an emerging competency‑based era: A commentary. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 47(1), 45–50. 

Hill, C. E., Sullivan, C., Knox, S., & Schlosser, L. Z. (2007). Therapist self‑disclosure: Research-based suggestions regarding clinical training, practices, and ethics. Psychotherapy Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 44(4), 392–407. 

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press. 

Jennings, L., & Skovholt, T. M. (2016). In T. M. Skovholt & K. Rønnestad (Eds.), Master therapists: Exploring expertise in therapy and counseling. Routledge. 

Skovholt, T. M., & Trotter‑Mathison, M. (2016). The resilient practitioner: Burnout prevention and self‑care strategies for counselors, therapists, teachers, and health professionals (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis. (Original concept described in earlier editions as an “ambiguity‑rich, feedback‑poor environment.”) 


*********************************

⭐️ 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! ⭐️

**********************************


Our goal at School for School Counselors is to help school counselors stay on fire, make huge impacts for students, and catalyze change for our roles through grassroots advocacy and collaboration. Listen to get to know more about us and our mission, feel empowered and inspired, and set yourself up for success in the wonderful world of school counseling.

Hang out in our Facebook group
Jump in, ask questions, share your ideas and become a part of the most empowering school counseling group on the planet! (Join us to see if we're right.)

Join the School for School Counselors Mastermind
The Mastermind is packed with all the things your grad program never taught you I

Steph Johnson:

Let me ask you something. Have you ever walked in your school building with your coffee in your hand, your badge swinging, your head held high? But deep down you felt you've you had absolutely no idea what you were doing. I mean, you've got some experience. Maybe people are even coming to you for answers on your campus, but still, still, there is that voice in the back of your head saying, "are you sure that this is the right call? If so, you are not alone. In fact, you are not alone. In fact, you might be in some really great company Because, if we are real, most of us started our school counseling work with just a little bit of Michael Scott energy.

Steph Johnson:

Do you know what I mean? From The Office: that Dunder Mifflin confidence, walking in the room like you are the world's best boss, waving that coffee mug, throwing out the one-liners. And back then you didn't really know what you didn't know and, to be honest, it didn't matter. But somewhere along the way your swag shifted. You started seeing cracks in the system, you started picking up on the nuances of student behavior and you really started to zero in on the fine line between supporting students and enabling them. And all of a sudden, every decision that you made on campus felt heavier and more complex, and that Michael Scott confidence started to go away.

Steph Johnson:

Today, I'm going to talk about why that happens and why it is a sure sign that you are not failing as a school counselor. It might actually be a sign that you're really good at your job.

Steph Johnson:

Hey, my friend, welcome back. I'm Steph Johnson, a licensed professional counselor and full-time school counselor, just like you. If you're tired of school counseling advice that sounds like it came from Pinterest, you're in the right place. Around here, we're keeping it real, we're keeping it grounded and I'm giving you tools and ideas that actually work, because you deserve more than pretty graphics and empty promises and empty promises.

Steph Johnson:

All right. So let's start with the psychology of this whole thing, and we'll go way back to 1999. Two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, published a study that is now very famous, showing that people with low ability at a task tend to overestimate their competence. Meanwhile, highly skilled people tend to underestimate themselves. This is now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. It says that inexperienced people are too uninformed to see what they don't know, so they feel pretty confident. It's like I often say, sometimes you don't know enough to know that you don't know. But experienced people see the nuance. They've made mistakes, they've learned enough and grown enough to know how complex school counseling really is. And so, because they see those complexities, they often second guess themselves

Steph Johnson:

.

Steph Johnson:

You might be feeling this shift in your own work. Think about, like year one, walking into a parent meeting and thinking thinking: this, you have this checklist, long: rehearsed what you're going to say,! you're But so proud of yourself for remembering to bring your special folder. And then, a year five, you walk in and you think okay, what landmines are about to go off? What am I missing? You're already anticipating the potential conflicts. You are now thinking about how this meeting fits into the student's long-term trajectory. You're thinking about parent dynamics and teacher capacity and how your recommendations are going to inform not only that meeting but the next six months. It's all because you've gained awareness. You're no longer reacting moment by moment. You're planning. You're not just checking boxes, you're reading the room, and the more that you see, the more carefully you move, because now you understand what's at stake. My friend, that's discernment and that shows that you are on your way to being a master at your craft.

Steph Johnson:

The hard part about school counseling is that, by and large, it's pretty much an invisible job. Now I know what you're thinking like people are finding me all day long. I wish I could be invisible, but what I mean is you're not getting any standardized metrics in your work, right. You don't get any performance bonuses and, nothing dramatic happens. Because you prevented the drama in the first place, you de-escalated the crisis before anyone ever saw it coming, and you had the hard conversation before the situation blew up. So, even as your skills grow and you get better and better at what you do, the evidence of your net, stays very fuzzy. No wonder so many school counselors are out there, unsure about the impact they're making or about the level of their own expertise, because no one claps for the things that didn't happen because you stepped in at the right time.

Steph Johnson:

This is what sociologist Arlie Hochschild described as invisible labor. This is the essential emotional work and relational work that keeps the systems running smoothly, but it happens in the background and it rarely gets noticed or measured. Truth be told, the better you are at doing this invisible labor, the more it feels like your job is being ignored, the more it feels like your job is being ignored. And if we add to that what Thomas Schofield called the ambiguity-rich, feedback-poor environment of helping professions, we realize that you are navigating tremendous emotional intensity and ethical nuance and you're doing that all day, but without any real-time affirming feedback. It almost feels like we're walking a tightrope every single day without a net right. We're navigating tricky conversations, we have some high-stakes student issues and we're making decisions in split seconds, but we don't have anybody coming around later to debrief or confirm whether or not we made the right call, because there's no rubric, there's no feedback and there's no applause. There's just silence. And over time that silence starts to feel a lot like doubt.

Steph Johnson:

And two, let's not forget about the role that role confusion plays in school counseling. Colbreth and colleagues 2005 found that school counselors face significant role ambiguity. We are constantly managing conflicting expectations from administrators, from teachers, from families and even sometimes from students. You might be asked to lead trauma-informed work in the morning, but then that's not important. By lunch you need to coordinate some testing accommodations and then by the afternoon, even that's not important anymore. Now you need to monitor the hallway accommodations and then by the afternoon even that's not important anymore. Now you need to monitor the hallway and do dismissal duty right. Even experienced school counselors reported high stress in this study due to unclear responsibilities and inconsistent definitions of what their role truly was inconsistent definitions of what their role truly was. So when you take all that into account and you stop and you reflect even just for a second, it is no wonder that we often have that voice creeping in the background saying did I do enough? Did I say too much, or was that really the right intervention?

Steph Johnson:

And the ironic thing about this is it hits the counselors hardest, who are actually doing the work, for those who are so invested in what they're doing that they care enough to reflect and question and want to do better. Because as you become more skilled at your job, as you become more thoughtful and more in tune with the complexity of what's being expected of you, it's natural to feel less certain about your skills. But that insecurity isn't always a sign of a deficit. Often that insecurity is the byproduct of growth and it's a signal to you that you're actually paying attention to what really matters. So how do you move forward If you feel like you're faking it every day? I've been there. I know what that feels like If you feel like you're faking it every day. I've been there. I know what that feels like If you feel like you're faking or failing or falling short, but you're not exactly sure where the benchmark even is.

Steph Johnson:

What do we do to move forward? First, I think we need to normalize the doubt in our field, because it's a sign of professional maturity. When you start asking better questions about what you do, it means that your thinking is evolving. So, instead of resisting that inner voice, listen to it. What is it trying to help you pay attention to? Secondly, name what's hard about your job Uncertainty and doubt and second-guessing. That all grows in silence. But when you say out loud, this situation is tough. But when you say out loud, this situation is tough or I'm not sure what the next best step might be, you take away its power and you allow space for reflection instead of shame.

Steph Johnson:

Third, and maybe the most important, stay rooted in reflective practice. Counseling research backs this up. Reflective practice improves your metacognition, your resilience, your ability to make ethical decisions and even to foster better outcomes. A 2010 study by Fallender and Schafransky I hope I said that right showed that deliberate reflection on our work enhances clinical insight. Who engage in intentional self-evaluation are more likely to recognize their blind spots and correct them before they harm the people they're working with. And even more recently, in 2016, jennings and Scovhold showed how the most effective counseling practitioners use doubt and reflection.

Steph Johnson:

All this to say I've said it before you've got to build in moments to pause. That doesn't mean hiding in your closet every day, although it would be nice if you had some white space here and there. Debrief, find a trusted colleague you can debrief with, instead of asking yourself was I perfect? Ask yourself did I act ethically? Was I attuned to that student's needs? What would I do differently next time? And surround yourself with people who get it. Not people who expect perfection, but people who realize they're not perfect either. So they're asking smart questions to help you think clearly.

Steph Johnson:

Insecurity thrives in isolation, but it shrinks when you remember you're not the only one that's feeling this way. That is 1000% why the School for School Counselors Mastermind exists. You get honest feedback, shared experience and colleagues who can sit with you in those gray areas and help you move forward. Not everything in school counseling needs to be figured out alone, despite what people kind of lead you to believe, despite what people kind of lead you to believe, and chances are, the things that you have been second-guessing in your career are probably already things that we have talked about in our weekly consultation chats and will continue to talk about Bottom line.

Steph Johnson:

If you are judging your skills based on someone else's curated, color-coded counseling content on Instagram, you're not getting the whole picture. Y'all that's branding, that's not benchmarking. Your messy notes, your middle-of-the-hallway quick consults and the tough decisions that you make that you don't have any templates for. That's the real work of school counseling, and the fact that it doesn't look perfect like you're seeing in your social media feeds is proof that you're doing it thoughtfully and you're getting better every day. That's the work. That's what real growth actually looks and feels like. It's not flashy, it's not polished, but it's deeply thoughtful and because it's so thoughtful, it's deeply effective. So if you feel like you've traded your beginning of school counseling, michael Scott swagger, for something a little bit quieter but maybe a little more thoughtful, congratulations. That's growth. That's not backsliding, and the good news is you don't need your world's best boss mug or world's best school counselor mug anymore. You've got something better. You have the quiet clarity that comes from doing the hard work well, even when no one's watching, and if you want a space where that kind of growth is recognized, you know where to find us.

Steph Johnson:

The mastermind isn't about just adding more crap to your to-do list or giving you more downloads to archive somewhere in some files you're never going to open again. It's about anchoring yourself in the kind of support that actually changes things for you and for your students. Hey, before you go, don't forget our free School Counselor Planner is out. It's ready for you to grab and download. All you have to do is go to our website, schoolforschoolcounselorscom, grab your download and start running toward the beginning of the new school year. We make this available every year to you because we want to show you how invested we are in your success. This is on the house from the goodness of our hearts, because we love and believe in what you do. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, I hope you have the best week. Take care.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Steph Johnson

Host