Kashish Chugh is a dedicated student counsellor navigating her final year of studies. Throughout 2025, we will follow Kashish’s journey as she balances academics, practical experience, and personal growth on her path to becoming a professional counsellor. Through her monthly blog, she will share insights, challenges, and valuable lessons, offering a real and relatable perspective on life as a final-year counselling student. Stay tuned for an inspiring year ahead!
Kashish Chugh | Research Meets Counselling: Why Self-Reflection Matters
When I chose the research pathway in my Master of Counselling, I wasn’t sure how closely it would connect to my future work as a practitioner. Counselling, after all, often feels most powerful in the intimacy of a conversation—the moment of silence, the gentle nod, the shared realisation. Yet, through my research, I’ve discovered that theory and practice are not separate worlds. They enrich one another.
My research explores the role of self-reflection in shaping the learning dispositions of higher education students in Australia. At first, this might sound distant from the counselling room, but the overlap is profound. Self-reflection is not just an academic exercise—it is the foundation of growth. For students, it influences how they approach challenges, adapt to feedback, and build resilience. For counsellors, it’s what keeps us aware, responsive, and ethically grounded in our work.
This journey hasn’t been simple. In fact, I struggled at the start. My first assessment didn’t earn the kind of results I had hoped for, and for a moment, I questioned whether I belonged in the research stream at all. But I’ve learned that self-reflection is not just the focus of my project—it’s the very skill that helped me move forward. I reminded myself that learning is not about flawless beginnings, but about staying curious, adapting, and trying again.
The more I study reflection, the more I notice its presence in my counselling practice. When I pause after a session to ask myself, What worked? What didn’t? How did I feel in that space?, I’m not just analysing—I’m learning. Self-reflection helps me uncover blind spots, notice patterns, and align my actions with my values. It’s the bridge that connects my training to my lived experience.
In counselling, we often invite clients to reflect—on their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Research reminds me that we must hold ourselves to the same standard. A reflective counsellor is one who continues to grow, who notices when they are triggered, and who learns from both mistakes and successes. Without self-reflection, practice risks becoming mechanical; with it, practice becomes alive, responsive, and deeply human.
For me, engaging in research has been grounding. It has shown me that the challenges I face as a student—juggling placement, assignments, and my own wellbeing—are not isolated struggles but part of larger patterns worth exploring. Research has given me language for what I’ve felt intuitively: that self-awareness is not a side note to learning, but its heartbeat.
To my fellow counselling students, I want to say this: don’t lose heart if your research or studies don’t unfold perfectly at the start. Growth doesn’t come from polished results—it comes from reflection, resilience, and persistence. When we commit to reflection—both in study and in practice—we don’t just become better students or better counsellors. We become better humans, capable of sitting with others in their complexity because we’ve learned to sit with our own.