Examining your personal and spiritual beliefs is necessary throughout your career as a counselor. The purpose
of self-reflection is to help counselors gain an understanding of their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions
so that they do not impose their beliefs on clients. This assignment will help you gain insight into your beliefs
and to help to identify alliance or conflict with the ACA Code of Ethics. Learning how to work through any
conflict because of your beliefs is important not to harm your client or violate ethical standards. This
assignment allows you to examine and apply steps to address the conflict.
INSTRUCTIONS
You will complete a self-reflective paper between your personal or spiritual beliefs and the counseling
professional values as depicted in the ACA Code of Ethics (available from
https://www.counseling.org/resources/aca-code-of-ethics.pdf). The paper should be 3–4 pages in length, APA
format, and include at least two references. The two required references are: Daniel (2020) and ACA Code of
Ethics (2014). Additional references are permitted, but not necessary.
This is a self-reflective paper and should be written in first person. However, please make sure that your style
remains professional. This is not texting, emailing, or FaceTime.
• Verify in one sentence that you read the Daniel (2020) text in its entirety.
• Choose two counseling professional values or codes from the ACA Code of Ethics that are in harmony with
your personal or spiritual beliefs. Do not choose obvious values, but values that maybe were not in harmony
until you progressed in this program or read Daniel’s text. Using the heading: Harmony Between Professional
Values and Spiritual Beliefs, write up to one page explaining the harmony between the professional values and
your spiritual beliefs.
• Using the heading: Integrating Professional Values and Spiritual Beliefs, write up to one page explaining how
these values and your spiritual beliefs came into harmony. What was this process for you? How were you
challenged to integrate the values and your beliefs? How did Daniel’s text challenge your thinking?
• Choose 2 counseling professional values or codes from the ACA Code of Ethics that still remain in conflict
with your personal or spiritual beliefs. Using the heading: Conflict Between Professional Values and Spiritual
Beliefs, write up to one page explaining the conflict that you still have to work through.
• Using the heading: Actions to Work Through the Conflicts, write up to one page reflecting on how you should
work through these conflicts and what this process should entail.