Our Personal Development is an Act of Professionalism

For the purposes of our professionally defined boundaries and distinctions, we separate the personal and the professional. When we say that someone is a professional, we not only imply someone who has the expertise, but also someone who doesn’t let the personal get in the way.

In the field of helping others develop, we need not separate personal development from professional development. In fact, our professional development hinges on how much we grow as a person.

(Though somewhat of a tangent, the most professional thing we can do is to also to become personal in deep conversations, with the aim of helping someone out of the woods.)

Here is a paradox: The therapist’s own development is not for herself. Our vocation—and its engine of development—is about being in service of the other. The moment our development has gone by the wayside, and we fail to bring it back on track, we have done our clients a disservice.

“Vocation is a moveable frontier between what we want for ourselves and what the world demands of us.”

~ Poet, David Whyte

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