Counseling Commons^™

Values Integration And The Professional Counselor, Rebecca Randall

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This qualitative study, informed by narrative inquiry, examined how counselors described the interplay of values in professional practice. Participant narratives highlighted the challenges they experience in the process of values integration, defined as counselors’ awareness and management of personal values in counseling processes. Participants often made value judgments that occurred rapidly and beneath awareness and only became aware as a result of discordance in the counseling relationship. They further struggled in skillfully working through values conflicts. These findings reveal that values integration is a developmental process that challenges counselors beyond the training years and thus requires an infrastructure that supports …