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

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.”) 

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Episode Transcript

Steph Johnson (00:00):
Let me ask you something.
Have you ever walked in yourschool building with your coffee
in your hand, your badgeswinging, your head held high?
But deep down you felt you'veyou had absolutely no idea what
you were doing.
I mean, you've got someexperience.

(00:28):
Maybe people are even coming toyou for answers on your campus,
but still, still, there is thatvoice in the back of your head
saying, "are you sure that thisis the right call?
If so, you are not alone.
In fact, you are not alone.
In fact, you might be in somereally great company Because, if

(00:49):
we are real, most of us startedour school counseling work with
just a little bit of MichaelScott energy.
Do you know what I mean?

From The Office (01:09):
that Dunder Mifflin confidence, walking in
the room like you are theworld's best boss, waving that
coffee mug, throwing out theone-liners.
And back then you didn't reallyknow what you didn't know and,
to be honest, it didn't matter.
But somewhere along the wayyour swag shifted.
You started seeing cracks inthe system, you started picking
up on the nuances of studentbehavior and you really started

(01:33):
to zero in on the fine linebetween supporting students and
enabling them.
And all of a sudden, everydecision that you made on campus
felt heavier and more complex,and that Michael Scott
confidence started to go away.

(01:55):
Today, I'm going to talk aboutwhy that happens and why it is a
sure sign that you are notfailing as a school counselor.
It might actually be a signthat you're really good at your
job.
Hey, my friend, welcome back.
I'm Steph Johnson, a licensedprofessional counselor and

(02:18):
full-time school counselor, justlike you.
If you're tired of schoolcounseling advice that sounds
like it came from Pinterest,you're in the right place.
Around here, we're keeping itreal, we're keeping it grounded
and I'm giving you tools andideas that actually work,
because you deserve more thanpretty graphics and empty

(02:40):
promises and empty promises.
All right.
So let's start with thepsychology of this whole thing,
and we'll go way back to 1999.
Two psychologists, DavidDunning and Justin Kruger,

(03:01):
published a study that is nowvery famous, showing that people
with low ability at a task tendto overestimate their
competence.
Meanwhile, highly skilledpeople tend to underestimate
themselves.
This is now known as theDunning-Kruger effect.
It says that inexperiencedpeople are too uninformed to see

(03:23):
what they don't know, so theyfeel 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 thenuance.
They've made mistakes, they'velearned enough and grown enough
to know how complex schoolcounseling really is.

(03:45):
And so, because they see thosecomplexities, they often second
guess themselves.
You might be feeling this shiftin your own work.
Think about, like year one,walking into a parent meeting

and thinking thinking (04:00):
this, you have this checklist, long:
rehearsed what you're going tosay,! you're But so proud of
yourself for remembering tobring your special folder.
And then, a year five, you walkin and you think okay, what
landmines are about to go off?
What am I missing?
You're already anticipating thepotential conflicts.

(04:22):
You are now thinking about howthis meeting fits into the
student's long-term trajectory.
You're thinking about parentdynamics and teacher capacity
and how your recommendations aregoing to inform not only that
meeting but the next six months.
It's all because you've gainedawareness.

(04:46):
You're no longer reactingmoment by moment.
You're planning.
You're not just checking boxes,you're reading the room, and
the more that you see, the morecarefully you move, because now
you understand what's at stake.
My friend, that's discernmentand that shows that you are on

(05:10):
your way to being a master atyour craft.
The hard part about schoolcounseling is that, by and large
, it's pretty much an invisiblejob.
Now I know what you're thinkinglike people are finding me all
day long.
I wish I could be invisible,but what I mean is you're not

(05:31):
getting any standardized metricsin your work, right.
You don't get any performancebonuses and, nothing dramatic
happens.
Because you prevented the dramain the first place, you
de-escalated the crisis beforeanyone ever saw it coming, and

(05:54):
you had the hard conversationbefore the situation blew up.
So, even as your skills growand you get better and better at
what you do, the evidence ofyour net, stays very fuzzy.
No wonder so many schoolcounselors are out there, unsure

(06:15):
about the impact they're makingor about the level of their own
expertise, because no one clapsfor the things that didn't
happen because you stepped in atthe right time.
This is what sociologist ArlieHochschild described as
invisible labor.
This is the essential emotionalwork and relational work that

(06:40):
keeps the systems runningsmoothly, but it happens in the
background and it rarely getsnoticed or measured.
Truth be told, the better youare at doing this invisible
labor, the more it feels likeyour job is being ignored, the
more it feels like your job isbeing ignored.
And if we add to that whatThomas Schofield called the

(07:04):
ambiguity-rich, feedback-poorenvironment of helping
professions, we realize that youare navigating tremendous
emotional intensity and ethicalnuance and you're doing that all
day, but without any real-timeaffirming feedback.
It almost feels like we'rewalking a tightrope every single

(07:29):
day without a net right.
We're navigating trickyconversations, we have some
high-stakes student issues andwe're making decisions in split
seconds, but we don't haveanybody coming around later to
debrief or confirm whether ornot we made the right call,
because there's no rubric,there's no feedback and there's

(07:51):
no applause.
There's just silence.
And over time that silencestarts to feel a lot like doubt.
And two, let's not forget aboutthe role that role confusion
plays in school counseling.
Colbreth and colleagues 2005found that school counselors

(08:15):
face significant role ambiguity.
We are constantly managingconflicting expectations from
administrators, from teachers,from families and even sometimes
from students.
You might be asked to leadtrauma-informed work in the
morning, but then that's notimportant.
By lunch you need to coordinatesome testing accommodations and

(08:36):
then by the afternoon, eventhat's not important anymore.
Now you need to monitor thehallway accommodations and then
by the afternoon even that's notimportant anymore.
Now you need to monitor thehallway and do dismissal duty
right.
Even experienced schoolcounselors reported high stress
in this study due to unclearresponsibilities and
inconsistent definitions of whattheir role truly was

(08:59):
inconsistent definitions of whattheir role truly was.
So when you take all that intoaccount and you stop and you
reflect even just for a second,it is no wonder that we often
have that voice creeping in thebackground saying did I do

(09:19):
enough?
Did I say too much, or was thatreally the right intervention?
And the ironic thing about thisis it hits the counselors
hardest, who are actually doingthe work, for those who are so
invested in what they're doingthat they care enough to reflect
and question and want to dobetter.
Because as you become moreskilled at your job, as you

(09:48):
become more thoughtful and morein 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'talways a sign of a deficit.
Often that insecurity is thebyproduct of growth and it's a
signal to you that you'reactually paying attention to

(10:08):
what really matters.
So how do you move forward Ifyou feel like you're faking it
every day?
I've been there.
I know what that feels like Ifyou feel like you're faking it
every day.
I've been there.
I know what that feels like Ifyou feel like you're faking or
failing or falling short, butyou're not exactly sure where
the benchmark even is.

(10:30):
What do we do to move forward?
First, I think we need tonormalize the doubt in our field
, because it's a sign ofprofessional maturity.
When you start asking betterquestions about what you do, it
means that your thinking isevolving.
So, instead of resisting thatinner voice, listen to it.

(10:56):
What is it trying to help youpay attention to?
Secondly, name what's hardabout your job Uncertainty and
doubt and second-guessing.
That all grows in silence.
But when you say out loud, thissituation is tough.

(11:19):
But when you say out loud, thissituation is tough or I'm not
sure what the next best stepmight be, you take away its
power and you allow space forreflection instead of shame.
Third, and maybe the mostimportant, stay rooted in
reflective practice.

(11:39):
Counseling research backs thisup.
Reflective practice improvesyour metacognition, your
resilience, your ability to makeethical decisions and even to
foster better outcomes.
A 2010 study by Fallender andSchafransky I hope I said that

(12:02):
right showed that deliberatereflection on our work enhances
clinical insight.
Who engage in intentionalself-evaluation are more likely

(12:23):
to recognize their blind spotsand correct them before they
harm the people they're workingwith.
And even more recently, in 2016, jennings and Scovhold showed
how the most effectivecounseling practitioners use
doubt and reflection.

(12:44):
All this to say I've said itbefore you've got to build in
moments to pause.
That doesn't mean hiding inyour closet every day, although
it would be nice if you had somewhite space here and there.
Debrief, find a trustedcolleague you can debrief with,
instead of asking yourself was Iperfect?

(13:06):
Ask yourself did I actethically?
Was I attuned to that student'sneeds?
What would I do differentlynext time?
And surround yourself withpeople who get it.
Not people who expectperfection, but people who
realize they're not perfecteither.

(13:27):
So they're asking smartquestions to help you think
clearly.
Insecurity thrives in isolation,but it shrinks when you
remember you're not the only onethat's feeling this way.
That is 1000% why the Schoolfor School Counselors Mastermind

(13:48):
exists.
You get honest feedback, sharedexperience and colleagues who
can sit with you in those grayareas and help you move forward.
Not everything in schoolcounseling needs to be figured
out alone, despite what peoplekind of lead you to believe,
despite what people kind of leadyou to believe, and chances are

(14:12):
, the things that you have beensecond-guessing in your career
are probably already things thatwe have talked about in our
weekly consultation chats andwill continue to talk about
Bottom line.
If you are judging your skillsbased on someone else's curated,
color-coded counseling contenton Instagram, you're not getting
the whole picture.

(14:32):
Y'all that's branding, that'snot benchmarking.
Your messy notes, yourmiddle-of-the-hallway quick
consults and the tough decisionsthat you make that you don't
have any templates for.
That's the real work of schoolcounseling, and the fact that it
doesn't look perfect likeyou're seeing in your social

(14:54):
media feeds is proof that you'redoing it thoughtfully and
you're getting better every day.
That's the work.
That's what real growthactually looks and feels like.
It's not flashy, it's notpolished, but it's deeply
thoughtful and because it's sothoughtful, it's deeply

(15:17):
effective.
So if you feel like you'vetraded your beginning of school
counseling, michael Scottswagger, for something a little
bit quieter but maybe a littlemore thoughtful, congratulations
.
That's growth.
That's not backsliding, and thegood news is you don't need

(15:38):
your world's best boss mug orworld's best school counselor
mug anymore.
You've got something better.
You have the quiet clarity thatcomes from doing the hard work
well, even when no one'swatching, and if you want a
space where that kind of growthis recognized, you know where to

(15:59):
find us.
The mastermind isn't about justadding more crap to your to-do
list or giving you moredownloads to archive somewhere
in some files you're never goingto open again.
It's about anchoring yourselfin the kind of support that
actually changes things for youand for your students.

(16:19):
Hey, before you go, don'tforget our free School Counselor
Planner is out.
It's ready for you to grab anddownload.
All you have to do is go to ourwebsite,
schoolforschoolcounselorscom,grab your download and start
running toward the beginning ofthe new school year.
We make this available everyyear to you because we want to

(16:40):
show you how invested we are inyour success.
This is on the house from thegoodness of our hearts, because
we love and believe in what youdo.
I'll be back soon with anotherepisode of the School for School
Counselors podcast.
In the meantime, I hope youhave the best week.
Take care.