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By Curtis Lee Taylor, PhD, LPC, LPCC

While resilience is a hallmark of counseling, an important question remains: What exactly are counselors being asked to be resilient against?

For years, conversations about counselor wellness have appropriately focused on self-care, boundaries, supervision and burnout prevention. These efforts remain essential. However, recent workforce research suggests that attrition is not simply a matter of personal fatigue. Behavioral health professionals cite inadequate compensation, administrative burden, limited opportunities for advancement and chronically stressful work environments among the primary drivers of turnover (Hallett et al., 2024). Counselor wellness is influenced not only by the health of the individual counselor, but also by the health of the systems in which counselors practice.

Counselors teach resilience because resilience matters. Yet resilience alone cannot solve every problem. Resilience helps us stay afloat, but better treading water is still treading. The next frontier of counselor wellness may not be teaching counselors how to endure increasingly difficult conditions, but how to improve the conditions themselves.

One area deserving greater attention is supervision and workforce development. Every counselor enters the profession through supervision, yet research suggests that supervision shortages, inconsistent requirements and financial barriers can hinder clinicians pursuing licensure and advancing within the profession (Kim, 2025). While the specifics vary from state to state, many counselors encounter barriers related to supervision, licensure and workforce development in different forms. At a time when communities across the country face behavioral health workforce shortages, we should be asking whether counselors are fully empowered to supervise, mentor and develop the next generation of clinicians.

A second challenge involves the utilization of counselor expertise. As behavioral health systems search for solutions to workforce shortages and access challenges, counselor expertise should be more fully utilized in leadership, policy development, administration, supervision and workforce expansion efforts. A profession cannot reach its full potential while underutilizing the expertise it has already developed.

Reimbursement remains another critical issue. Workforce research consistently identifies compensation as a major factor influencing retention and attrition (Hallett et al., 2024), while evidence suggests reimbursement structures directly affect provider participation and access to care (Zhu et al., 2024). When counseling services are undervalued, communities lose experienced clinicians, waitlists grow and access to care suffers. Sustainable reimbursement is not merely an economic concern; it is a workforce issue, an access issue and ultimately a wellness issue.

These challenges share a common theme: professional capacity. Strengthening supervision systems develops future counselors. Expanding opportunities for counselor leadership increases the profession's influence and impact. Sustainable reimbursement supports retention, access and long-term viability. Together, these reforms strengthen the counseling profession's ability to serve clients, communities and future generations of counselors.

Counselors have demonstrated extraordinary commitment for decades, but counselors need more than resilience. They need systems that allow them to fully utilize their training, expertise and commitment to service.

Advocacy is the mechanism by which we build those systems. We can advocate for our profession through:

• Individual Advocacy: Counselors can help clients navigate complex systems and assert their rights, ensuring that our work remains client-centered.
• Community Advocacy: We can address broader social issues that affect mental health, such as access to care and systemic equity.
• Professional Advocacy: We must advocate for the counseling profession itself by supporting sustainable reimbursement, effective supervision systems and the full utilization of counselor expertise.
• Get Involved: Visit the ÀÖ²©´«Ã½Action Center to contact your representatives and advocate for policies that strengthen our workforce infrastructure, such as Connect with your state counseling association to get involved in state-level advocacy efforts. Together, we can create a more supportive environment that promotes mental health and professional well-being for all.

Resilience will always matter.

But resilience alone cannot build the workforce, expand access to care or strengthen the future of the profession.

References

Hallett, E., Simeon, E., Amba, V., Howington, D., McConnell, K. J., & Zhu, J. M. (2024). Factors influencing turnover and attrition in the public behavioral health system workforce: Qualitative study. Psychiatric Services, 75(1), 55–63.

Kim, J. (2025). Supervisees' payment for clinical supervision: Supervisor shortage and changing practice trend [Preprint]. Research Square.

Zhu, J. M., Huntington, A., Haeder, S., Wolk, C., & McConnell, K. J. (2024). Insurance acceptance and cash pay rates for psychotherapy in the US. Health Affairs Scholar, 2(9), qxae110.