AS an advocate and youth worker, I was inspired and motivated by my own experiences and hardship to help others. I know the struggle and challenges that are similarly faced in certain situations and for that reason, I wanted to help other young people like myself. While I can empathize and understand these issues and events, one does not need to endure trauma to understand it. With that in mind, a good counsellor, advocate or helper does not need to experience social issues to gain a deeper insight and understanding of them. It is harmful to yourself and your clients or target population in need, if you bond over your trauma with your clients.

Your trauma and unresolved issues might affect the quality of help and service you provide to those in need. You can project your unresolved issues onto your clients or target population when it is uncalled for. You cannot solve your problems through your clients and target population. You cannot solve their issues based on how you would’ve liked your trauma to be resolved. You do not bring unresolved issues and problems to a helping relationship as the helper. This is why therapists, counsellors, advocates and helpers need to seek professional help themselves.

As adults, we tend to overlook unresolved issues and trauma. We might think our issues are as important, or that we can cope and handle it ourselves. We do this over a prolonged period of time until a small issue becomes a major life crisis and we have a long list of unresolved issues. When you’re helping someone while having unresolved trauma and issues, you might involuntarily trigger emotional responses to the said situation. You might become overly sensitive about the issue while helping clients or target population and this can cloud our judgment or rationality on how to better help said clients.

Unresolved issues and trauma can affect every aspect of your life—not just how you help others in your helping profession. Sometimes, we think that because we’re the professionals we don’t need to see other professions to seek help. When a dentist has a decaying tooth, will he refuse to visit another dentist, or will he accept help in order to help his tooth? If he’s a dentist who isn’t prideful, then he’ll go to another dentist to seek help for his tooth. Likewise, we should also seek help from other professionals. Counsellors, therapists and social helpers often think that they can “self-counsel” at all times. You ought to learn when to realise that you do not hold all the answers to life and that your emotions might get in the way of how to rationally help yourselves. With that in mind, you must also be mindful of how your unresolved issues can affect your clients.

If by chance, you’re still working through trauma and issues that are unresolved—learn to say NO to a client with similar issues until you’re mentally and emotionally capable of handling such. We pass onto others what we don’t process. Until you process and solve what’s unresolved with you and yourself,you won’t help others in need. Your efforts in helping will prove futile if you don’t help yourself before helping others.