As professional counselors, we enter this field with a desire to understand and help others. There comes a time in every counselor’s career, however, when intellectual understanding is overpowered by the need for empathic understanding. This is particularly true when counselors work with clients who intentionally cut, burn, scratch, hit or otherwise

Mark was 16 when he found himself in a youth detention facility again. The reasons for his incarceration aren’t necessarily important; he had committed plenty of crimes in his life. His past actions came as no surprise. His father had been incarcerated for the entirety of Mark’s life. His mother