By examining the specific emotional phenomena of self-narratives and how they are expressed in normal counselling interactions, this paper highlights the importance of taking emotional information into account within a career-counselling context. Based on three cases taken from a corpus of 64 interviews and on a protocol identifying the essentially verbal expression of emotions and emotion management, the focus in the paper is on how emotions can erupt when the client is recounting biographical episodes and how counsellors handle the situation. The results highlight the discourse procedures used by clients (e.g. preliminary phrases, seeking ratification, hesitations, repetitions, reference to self) and by counsellors (e.g. reformulations, questions) and show that counsellors can transform the client's emotional reactions, which can have a decisive impact on the outcome of counselling interviews.