CEFS 500 Week 7 Wellness Assessment and Plan Paper Example

Wellness Assessment and Plan Paper: Three Self-Assessments and a Plan for the Coping and Physical Self

Purpose and Framework

The purpose of these assessments was to replace my impressions of my own wellness with measured results, so that the plan begun in my impairment paper could target the areas that most need attention. I used the Indivisible Self model as the framework. Myers and Sweeney (2004) describe wellness as an integrated whole built on five second-order factors: the creative self, which includes thinking, emotions and control; the coping self, which includes realistic beliefs, stress management, self-worth and leisure; the social self, made up of friendship and love; the essential self, which includes spirituality, gender and cultural identity and self-care; and the physical self, which includes exercise and nutrition. Granello and Young (2019) present wellness as a defining value of the counseling profession, which counselors are expected to practice as well as promote.

Assessments

I completed three instruments during Module/Week 6. The first was a wellness inventory organized by the five factors of the Indivisible Self, scored on a 0-to-100 scale for each factor. Next came the Professional Quality of Life Scale, built for people in helping work, which yields three scores: compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress. In the manual's bands, a subscale score up to 22 counts as low, 23 through 41 as average, and 42 or more as high (Stamm, 2010). Although I have not yet seen counseling clients, I completed it with reference to my six years of youth ministry. The third was the Perceived Stress Scale, which asks how unpredictable, uncontrollable and overloaded a person has found life over the past month (Cohen et al., 1983).

Results

My strongest areas are the social and essential selves. Friendship, my marriage, my faith and my church community are real sources of strength, and they match the high compassion satisfaction score, which suggests that I find genuine meaning in helping others. My lowest areas are the coping self and the physical self. Within coping, the items on leisure and on stress management were lowest, and within the physical self, exercise was stronger than nutrition and sleep. The burnout score sits in the average range but near its lower end, and the perceived stress score is moderate, consistent with a demanding season of graduate school, work and caring for my father.

Discussion

The pattern is consistent: I am well supported and find meaning in helping, but I do not rest well, and that is exactly the pattern my impairment paper identified as my greatest risk. High compassion satisfaction can mask strain, because work that feels meaningful is easy to keep doing past the point of fatigue. Figley (2002) describes compassion fatigue as a cost of caring that grows when helpers neglect their own self-care, and the low leisure and stress management items suggest that I am vulnerable to that pattern even though my current burnout and secondary traumatic stress scores are acceptable. My strengths offer the means to change: the people and practices that sustain me socially and spiritually can also hold me accountable for rest.

The results also refine the plan in my impairment paper. That plan named a sabbath, exercise, supervision, relationships and spiritual practice, but it treated them as equally urgent. The scores show that relationships and spiritual practice are already strong and need only protecting, while rest, sleep and nutrition need deliberate change. They also show that exercise, which I had listed first, is stronger than I assumed. A plan that spreads effort evenly would waste energy on areas that are already healthy, so the revised plan below concentrates on the coping and physical selves.

Finally, the results remind me of the limits of self-report. Each instrument asks me to describe myself, and helpers are often poor judges of their own fatigue. For that reason, the plan includes people who can observe me, my wife, a friend and a mentor, rather than relying on scores alone.

Wellness Plan

• 1. Goal: raise the coping self through protected leisure. Action: keep Sunday free of paid work, study and email, and set aside Thursday evening for woodworking with my son. Support: my wife will keep the sabbath on our family calendar. Obstacle: exam weeks. Response: move coursework earlier in the week rather than giving up the sabbath.
• 2. Goal: strengthen the physical self through sleep and nutrition. Action: in bed with the lamp off at 10:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and planned lunches four days a week instead of skipping meals. Support: a weekly check-in with a friend from church who has the same goal. Obstacle: late evenings caring for my father. Response: ask my sister to cover one evening a week.
• 3. Goal: reduce perceived stress through stress management. Action: ten minutes of prayer and Scripture reading each morning and a five-minute breathing practice before study sessions. Support: a monthly meeting with a mentor in the counseling field. Obstacle: forgetting on busy mornings. Response: tie the practice to my first cup of coffee.

Reassessment

I will retake all three instruments at the end of my first practicum semester. Success would be a coping self score above 70, a physical self score above 70 and a perceived stress score below 15, with compassion satisfaction remaining high. If burnout rises above the average range, I will raise it with my supervisor and adjust my caseload expectations. I will also write a short reflection after each reassessment, noting which parts of the plan I kept, which I abandoned and why, so that the next version of the plan rests on what actually happened rather than on good intentions. Over the course of the program, these reflections should show whether the coping self is strengthening or whether a different approach is needed.

Conclusion

Wellness for a counselor is not a luxury but part of competent and ethical practice. Jesus withdrew to desolate places to pray even when crowds were seeking him (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Luke 5:15-16), a pattern that suggests rest is part of faithful service rather than a retreat from it. These assessments show where my own rest is thin, and the plan gives me specific ways to strengthen it before clients depend on me.

References

Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385-396. https://doi.org/10.2307/2136404

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Figley, C. R. (2002). Compassion fatigue: Psychotherapists' chronic lack of self care. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(11), 1433-1441. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.10090

Granello, D. H., & Young, M. E. (2019). Counseling today: Foundations of professional identity (2nd ed.). Pearson.

Myers, J. E., & Sweeney, T. J. (2004). The indivisible self: An evidence-based model of wellness. Journal of Individual Psychology, 60(3), 234-245.

Stamm, B. H. (2010). The concise ProQOL manual (2nd ed.). ProQOL.org.