Ideal for anyone embarking on or considering a career in the helping professions, BECOMING A HELPER, Seventh Edition, provides an overview of the stages of the helping process while teaching students the skills and knowledge they need to become successful helping professionals. Drawing on their years of experience, Corey and Corey focus on the struggles, anxieties, and uncertainties students often encounter on the road to becoming effective helpers. They also emphasize self-reflection on a number of professional issues. Finally, the authors help students decide if a career in the helping professions is right for them by asking them to take a candid look at the demands and strains they'll face in the field.

1. Are the Helping Professions for You?
2. Helper, Know Thyself.
3. Knowing Your Values.
4. Understanding Diversity.
5. Common Concerns of Beginning Helpers.
6. The Helping Process.
7. Theory Applied to Practice.
8. Ethical and Legal Issues Facing Helpers.
9. Managing Boundary Issues.
10. Getting the Most From Your Fieldwork and Supervision.
11. Working With Groups.
12. Working in the Community.
13. Stress, Burnout, and Self-Care.
14. Managing Crisis: Personally and Professionally.

Ideal for anyone embarking on or considering a career in the helping professions, BECOMING A HELPER, Seventh Edition, provides an overview of the stages of the helping process while teaching students the skills and knowledge they need to become successful helping professionals. Drawing on their years of experience, Corey and Corey focus on the struggles, anxieties, and uncertainties students often encounter on the road to becoming effective helpers. They also emphasize self-reflection on a number of professional issues. Finally, the authors help students decide if a career in the helping professions is right for them by asking them to take a candid look at the demands and strains they'll face in the field. Chapter 14, “Managing Crisis: Personally and Professionally,” is a new chapter that addresses how dealing with a personal crisis can influence a counselor's ability to work professionally with individuals, groups, and communities in crisis. It provides an understanding of how crisis situations affect individuals as well as a system that helping professionals can apply to better handle crises in their own lives without becoming stressed and exhausted. The system can also be easily translated to handling crisis situations as a counselor. Chapter 1, “Are the Helping Professions for You?” offers expanded discussion of the motivations for becoming a helper and updated information on the various career paths. Chapter 2, “Helper, Know Thyself,” presents a new section on how professional practice can impact a helper's personal life, new material on countertransference on the helper's part, and new case examples to illustrate challenges in understanding life stages. Chapter 3, “Knowing Your Values,” is substantially revised with new case studies and increased emphasis on the importance of helpers learning to manage their values so as to not unduly influence their clients. There's also increased emphasis on seeking supervision when maintaining objectivity becomes a problem, bracketing personal values in counseling relationships, and ACA's 2014 Code of Ethics pertaining to managing values. Other new material discusses managing values conflicts as well as court cases pertaining to value conflicts and their implications for the counseling profession. Chapter 4, “Understanding Diversity,” features revised, new, or expanded discussion of social justice perspectives as a part of multiculturalism, microaggressions, understanding people with disabilities, and multicultural competence. Chapter 5, “Common Concerns of Helpers,” presents a reconceptualized notion of resistance and offers alternative perspectives on understanding client defensiveness, ambivalence, and guarded behavior. There's also new material on motivational interviewing, when and how to make referrals, and working effectively with involuntary clients. Chapter 6, “The Helping Process,” revises and updates the stages in the helping process; and Chapter 7, “Theory Applied to Practice,” offers updated coverage of an integrative perspective on counseling. Chapter 8, “Ethical and Legal Issues Facing Helpers,” includes new material on addressing unethical behavior by colleagues, a new section on confidentiality and privacy in a technological world, and inclusion of ACA's 2014 Code of Ethics as it applies to ethical issues. Chapter 9, “Managing Boundary Issues,” includes revised material on multiple relationships and the code of ethics, new sections offering a cultural perspective on boundaries as well as information on social media and boundaries, and updated coverage of bartering and gift giving.