Eight Years on the Frontlines: A Burnt-Out Counselor's Story

 I’ve spent the past eight years as a behavioral and residential counselor, and somewhere along the way, the job stopped feeling like a job and started feeling like a slow unraveling.

When people ask what I do, I usually give the short, polite version: I work in behavioral health. It sounds professional, contained, maybe even rewarding. And sometimes, it is. But most days? Most days it feels like I’m patching leaks on a sinking ship with my bare hands—and a roll of duct tape I bought on clearance.

I’ve watched clients die. Not one. Not two. Too many. Drug-induced psychotic breaks that felt both sudden and inevitable, leaving behind an echo of what-ifs that never really fade. One client—who I genuinely felt like could beat his demons—ended up taking someone else’s life and then his own in a suicide-by-cop standoff induced by a days-long methamphetamine bender and zero hope. I can still see the headlines in my mind, and the YouTube video a bystander took of the horrific scene unfolding, even now. Some days, I wonder if my career would make a better Netflix series or just a very depressing documentary.

I’ve worked with clients in the grip of dementia who turned their confusion into rage, making me their target because I was the closest one in reach. Free boxing lessons, courtesy of early-onset memory loss. I’ve had clients in meth withdrawal crises who ripped at their own faces, screaming through the night while I tried to keep them safe with nothing but my voice and my presence. I’ve stood in the path of drug-induced psychosis, watching eyes go vacant as reality slipped through their fingers, while silently wishing for hazard pay—or at least a strong drink.

In college, they talked about burnout. Sure, they warned us. But always in the context of long shifts, endless paperwork, or the stress of covering for co-workers who didn’t show up. They didn’t tell us about the nights you lie awake wondering if you were the defining factor in someone’s chaotic, unsafe behavior or life-changing choice. They didn’t prepare us for the fact that you’ll rarely—if ever—hear you’re doing a good job. Or that you can be physically assaulted at work while trying to keep someone safe and not be offered so much as a single day to recoup, to decompress, to breathe. You’re expected to be back. To be on. To be exactly the same as before. No bumps, no bruises, and god forbid if they do show—that they don’t hurt. Or at least, you better not let on that they do.

And through it all, I kept showing up. Because that’s what we do. That’s what this job demands.

But lately, I’ve been wondering—at what cost? How many pieces of yourself can you give away before there’s nothing left? How many sleepless nights, how many tragedies, how many hits—literal and metaphorical—before you stop recognizing the person in the mirror?

This is the part nobody tells you when you start in this field. They tell you about compassion and resilience and the lives you’ll change. They don’t tell you about the ones you’ll lose, or the pieces of yourself you’ll bury with them. Or that your coping mechanism will become gallows humor and gas station coffee.

I don’t have a neat conclusion for this. No inspiring wrap-up. Just a tired counselor who loves this work, hates what it’s done to me, and doesn’t quite know what comes next—except maybe another cup of terrible coffee and a smile so fake it deserves its own Oscar.

S&S