On Trying To Live Your Values When the Bills Still Need Paying
When we set up Counsellors Therapy Pot, our clarion call was simple: let’s make it easier for counsellors to access the support they need. It turns out making things easier isn’t that easy.
What I Wish I’d Known About Wellbeing at the Beginning of My Counselling Career
When I started out as a counsellor, my head was occupied with thoughts of ‘am I doing this right?’, trying to remember relevant theory and my speech for contracting with new clients. Once I set up private practice, my thoughts were with directory listings, social media, and ethical and legal requirements. My wellbeing wasn’t a top priority, and I don’t think I fully realised that it should have been.
The Silence After the Session
There are parts of our work that we train for, plan for, and feel ready to meet. And then there are the moments that shake us to our core, the ones we hope will never come. Losing a client by suicide is one of them. I’m writing this because counsellor grief deserves a place in our conversations, and because being part of a community means being willing to hold the difficult truths as well as the hopeful ones….
Counsellor Burnout is Real
At the end of 2021 I’d been in private practice for three years and I realised I needed professional help, the kind that I usually gave to others. This was due to a medical trauma I had at the end of 2020, plus other stressors. I’ve had lots of therapy over the years (like a lot of therapists) and understood my own therapy would be an intermittent part of life, but the situation snuck up on me. Just because we are therapists doesn’t mean we can always see the wood for the trees with our own issues!
Why we do what we do
We started over a pot of tea and homemade cake in a community hub café full of new parents, pottering toddlers and sleeping dogs. Each time we met, ostensibly for a quick afternoon catch up, the café would close around us.
There is a very clear divide in life between before and after becoming a counsellor, at least there was for us. We met in the before times, working in the same office, sharing a bus route. Beth was years deep into her counselling training, while I was plodding through my Undergrad. In Beth’s final year, I promised to write (and possibly submit) her resignation in support of her new path. I was only half joking.
Five ways to build your career and personal confidence
When I first qualified, I looked at established counsellors and therapists who had unique and powerful branding or who made definitive and authentic decisions about their career path or those who voiced marginal and even controversial opinions about their profession or work with envy. I wanted to be them and had no idea that one day I could or would be in that same situation.
The F Word…
If you are reading this, you probably already know that it costs a lot to be a therapist or counsellor in private practice. Some of us might think ‘I’d be doing okay if it wasn’t for the tolls I have to pay to run my business.’ This includes supervision, room hire, insurance, CPD, membership of a governing body, advertising and our own counselling should we need it.
You are Important…
On Saturday I went to a spa for a couple of hours to enjoy the jacuzzi, sauna and steam rooms, and I thought to myself, ‘why have I left it until now, when I am burnt out, to do something like this?’
It got me thinking that I see signs of many of us, in our profession, behaving similarly. I see some people not taking regular holidays because they don’t want to let their clients down or putting off having personal therapy due to the expense or time taken.