Counseling and helping relationship involve multiple challenges and difficulties, especially when it comes to interventions with vulnerable, traumatized or marginalized populations. These challenges contribute to arousing intense emotions for the workers in the face of which they may find themselves powerless. Although the rules of feeling associated with the field of counseling tend to minimize or deny difficult work-related experiences, the scientific literature emphasizes the need for workers to recognize, regulate and verbalize the emotions they experience in intervention, particularly through emotional regulation and mentalization. The following article therefore proposes a theoretical and clinical elaboration of these essential concepts, both protective factors against burnout and facilitators of sensitive and adapted interventions.