‘I'm a tough cookie’: An IPA study of the experience of burnout in trainee counselling psychologists

Objective

Counselling psychology training consists of several professional, academic and personal demands. Poor management of these demands could lead to trainees experiencing burnout and potentially dropping out from training. The existing literature primarily focuses on the stressors of counselling psychology training or the effects of burnout in general, but the research is sparse on burnout being a potentially useful learning experience for trainees. The aim of this paper was to present the experiences of eight third-year trainee counselling psychologists, with a specific focus on how burnout influenced their development as they approached the end of their training. This paper was written from a larger doctoral research thesis.

Method

In-depth, semi-structured interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Results and Conclusions

Four themes emerged from the analysis: A perfect storm: The demands of counselling psychology training, Treading on shaky foundations, Ripple effect of the training and Rebuilding from the ashes: Learning from burnout. The overall findings suggested burnout was characterised as perseverance through unaddressed difficulties, shame and significant personal upheaval from the training process. However, most trainees learned from their experience of burnout and reported developing greater resilience and self-awareness. Recommendations and areas for future research are also discussed in this paper.