A Couple Counselors

During my first years as a school counselor, I felt like my wheels were spinning. I was running interventions without intention, juggling endless responsibilities, and constantly wondering if I was really helping students. I could feel the stress and burnout building, and eventually, my mental health was taking a hit.

Research on educator burnout has connected chronic occupational stress with poorer well-being and burnout-related outcomes, but I didn’t need a research article to tell me something was wrong. I was living it.

When Counselor Burnout Starts Following You Home

What I eventually realized was that the stress wasn’t staying at school. When we ignore our own mental health, it can affect the way we show up everywhere. Our energy for students, our patience with colleagues, and our relationships at home. I was beginning to understand that I couldn’t keep pouring from an empty cup and expect nothing else in my life to be affected.

At first, I thought I simply needed to find better ways to manage the stress of counseling. But over time, I realized I needed something more than another strategy for getting through a difficult week.

I needed something that gave me energy. For me, that meant finding a passion outside of counseling.

I Didn’t Need Another Self-Care Checklist. I Needed Something That Gave Me Energy.

When we talk about school counselor self-care, the conversation can sometimes become another list of things we are supposed to do: take a break, set boundaries, exercise, rest, and make time for ourselves.

Those things matter. But for me, something was missing.

I needed something that wasn’t just helping me recover from work. I needed something that gave me a sense of creativity, purpose, and enjoyment that wasn’t dependent on what happened during the school day.

That passion became building resources with my husband on Teachers Pay Teachers.

What started as a creative project became much more meaningful than I expected. The process of creating resources together gave me something to look forward to. It allowed me to use my counseling experience differently, collaborate with someone I loved, and create something that could potentially help other counselors and students.

Research on recovery from work supports the importance of activities outside of work that allow people to mentally detach, relax, experience mastery, and have a sense of control over their time (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007). That distinction resonated with me. I wasn’t looking for another obligation. I was looking for something restorative.

Finding a Passion That Restored Me

The biggest surprise was that my passion outside of counseling didn’t pull me further away from my work. In many ways, it helped me return to it with a different perspective.

Creating resources became a restorative process.

Reflection: We drew from our real-life experiences in the field, thinking critically about what students and counselors truly needed. We researched ways to improve what we were creating rather than simply recreating things we had already seen.

Collaboration: Working with my husband brought energy, accountability, and joy into the creative process. I wasn’t carrying the responsibility alone, and the work became something we could experience together.

Implementation: Designing, testing, and refining resources reminded me why I became a counselor in the first place. I could see how a well-designed lesson, activity, or tool could make something easier for a counselor or more meaningful for a student.

Balance: Most importantly, I began intentionally setting aside time for something other than counseling. That helped me realize that having a meaningful life outside my job didn’t detract from my effectiveness as a counselor. It was helping me sustain it.

That shift also changed the way I thought about my professional work.

Becoming More Intentional About the Work I Do

Looking back, one of the biggest problems during my early years wasn’t simply that I was busy. I was busy without being intentional about where my time and energy were going.

I was running interventions, managing responsibilities, and trying to meet everyone’s needs. I didn’t always stop to ask whether what I was doing was actually moving students or our counseling program forward. That realization has stayed with me.

The ASCA National Model emphasizes intentional school counseling practice, including using data to understand student needs, evaluate programs, and make decisions about how counseling services are delivered. For me, becoming more intentional meant learning to ask not only, “What am I doing?” but also, “How do I know this is helping?”

That question changed the way I approached my work. It also changed the way we approached resource creation. Our experiences in schools gave us questions worth exploring. Research helped us think through those questions. Data and feedback helped us evaluate whether something was actually useful. Then we could revise and improve it.

In that way, the creative work outside of school started strengthening some of the same professional habits I wanted to bring into school: reflection, intentionality, collaboration, implementation, and evaluation.

What Our Passion Eventually Became

Over time, that creative process grew into our Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Our store grew from a combination of real-world counseling experience, research, reflection, and a shared passion between my husband and me. Creating resources gave us a way to turn what we were learning in schools into practical tools for other counselors and educators.

But the store itself isn’t really the point of this story. The bigger lesson for me was what happened along the way. I discovered that my identity didn’t have to begin and end with being a school counselor. I could be a counselor and a creator. A professional and a wife. Someone who cared deeply about students and someone who needed something in her own life that simply brought her joy.

That realization helped me think differently about balance.

Protecting Your Energy Is Part of Being an Effective Counselor

I don’t think finding a passion outside of counseling means you have to start a side business, create resources, or turn your hobby into something productive.

In fact, I think the opposite is important. Your passion doesn’t have to produce anything. It doesn’t have to make money. It doesn’t have to improve your résumé. It doesn’t even have to be connected to education. It simply needs to be something that gives you energy, purpose, creativity, connection, or joy.

For one counselor, that might be creating. For another, it might be gardening, running, painting, coaching, reading, traveling, cooking, volunteering, or spending time with family.

The point isn’t to add another responsibility to an already overwhelming schedule. The point is to protect a part of your life that reminds you that you are more than your caseload, meetings, interventions, or your to-do list.

For me, that passion happened to become something professional. But the restorative part came first.

You Don’t Have to Find My Passion. You Need to Find Yours.

Looking back, I don’t think the biggest benefit was that we built a successful resource business. The bigger benefit was that I found something that gave me energy at a time when counseling was taking so much of it.

It reminded me that protecting my mental health wasn’t selfish. It helped me become more intentional about my work, more present with students and colleagues, and more available for the people I loved outside of school.

If you’re feeling burned out as a school counselor, maybe the answer isn’t always finding another strategy to help you do your job better. Maybe part of the answer is finding something that reminds you who you are outside of your job.

Finding a passion outside of counseling isn’t a luxury. For me, it became a lifeline. And sometimes, taking care of yourself doesn’t mean stepping away from the things that give your life purpose.

Sometimes, it means making room for more of them.

-Melissa