The Experience Of Self-Care Practices Among Malaysian Counselors In Crisis Work

Providing crisis intervention and psychological support in crisis work requires counselor’s resiliency in coping with the massive adversity situations, multiple responsibilities, unexpected public demands, and their own psychological distress. Thus, self-care practices become a crucial need for counselors that provide themselves with relief, recovery, and growth ability. Although most of Malaysian counselors does not receive formal training in self-care, it does not limit them to practice self-care in their own ways. Thus, there is a need to explore what kind of self-care practices are applied by the counselors in crisis situation so that the experience can be referred as a guide the other counselors. This paper is a qualitative review of several selected studies related to the experience of self-care practices among Malaysian counselors. The search strategy was applied to collect relevant studies by using keywords such as "self-care", "Malaysian counselor" and "crisis experience". The search was limited to the publication of research articles and dissertation within years 2015 to 2021. Thematic analysis then was used to analyze the findings of the research. Three themes that reflect the phases of self-care experience emerge from the thematic analysis namely (1) before deployment, (2) during crisis work, and (3) after duty". Each theme has its own subthemes that reflects the areas of self-care practices. The analysis also reveals two important findings. Firstly, it initiates that self-care practices are a continuous process in counseling profession particularly in crisis work. Secondly, it
is found that the Malaysian counselors put high priority on spiritual self-care practices. It is hoped that these findings may lead towards further research to deeply explore the self-care experience of Malaysian counselors without neglecting the essence of religious belief in the experience.
Keyword: Self-care, Malaysian counselors, crisis work, crisis experience