Personal therapy for counselling trainees

Your therapy is about you, not your training. Whilst counselling courses require students to undertake personal therapy as part of their training, the sessions should not feel like another tick box on the journey!

You don't need to arrive with something profound to explore or excellent insight. And you don't need to worry about whether you're being a “good counselling student” in the therapy room.

This is your space! You might want to explore something that has been brought up by your training, understand a pattern in your relationships, work through something from your past, or simply have somewhere that isn't connected to your course, placement or professional identity.

Personal therapy may be particularly useful if you're:

• beginning counselling training and adjusting to the personal demands of the course

• noticing that your own experiences are being stirred up

• becoming more aware of patterns in your relationships

• struggling with anxiety, confidence or self-doubt

• finding it difficult to separate your own experiences from your emerging role as a counsellor

• navigating a significant change or difficulty alongside your training

• simply wanting your own space to think

You don't need to be struggling with your mental health to come to counselling. Your sessions can simply be a place to explore what is happening for you.

Learning to be a counsellor is different when you're sitting in the room with a real client!

Your first placement can bring a lot with it. You may find yourself thinking about a client long after the session has ended. You might be unsure whether you've handled something appropriately. You may be questioning an intervention, worrying about risk, thinking about boundaries or wondering what you're experiencing in the therapeutic relationship.

You might also be discovering that being a counsellor isn't quite what you imagined, wondering whether you will ever fully remember everything in that contract or finding it difficult to navigate between advice from your placement and course provider.

Supervision gives you somewhere to slow down and think about the work, rather than simply trying to work out whether you did the “right” thing.

I provide reflective, developmental clinical supervision for trainee counsellors, with a focus on helping you develop your clinical thinking, confidence and professional identity. I predominantly utilise the seven-eyed model of supervision.

Supervision can give you space to think about:

Your client

What might be happening for them? What are they bringing? What might you be missing?

The therapeutic relationship

What's happening between you and your client? How might your own responses be influencing the work?

Your interventions

Why did you respond in the way you did? What other possibilities might there have been?

Risk, ethics and boundaries

How do you think through situations involving safeguarding, risk, confidentiality and professional boundaries?

Your development

What are you learning about yourself as an emerging counsellor?

The wider context

How might placement, organisational expectations, culture and other systems be affecting the work?

And don’t worry, I understand that most courses will require some additional paperwork from your supervisor and I am happy to provide this to support you on your journey.

I'm a BACP-registered counsellor, a Level 7 qualified clinical supervisor, and a Level 4 qualified safeguarding lead. I have 15 years experience working as a mental health professional, including within voluntary and NHS services. I have almost a decade of counselling experience, and have spent many years working within a mental health service in a University. I understand the many challenges that can come with returning to education as an adult and juggling the competing demands of life, education and the journey of personal development that counselling training often is.

Above all of this, I have been where you are!! I understand the transition from learning about counselling to actually becoming a counsellor. I remember overthinking the process of finding a therapist, and then finding a supervisor!

I am an integrative counsellor, drawing on the skills of a variety of theoretical approaches to help meet the needs of my clients. My supervision practice is informed by the Seven-Eyed Model, with a strong emphasis on reflection, the therapeutic relationship, context and developing clinical thinking.

Please contact me for an initial conversation.

Counselling sessions are charged at £40 per session for trainees.

Supervision sessions are charged at £45 per hour for trainees, or £60 per 1.5 hour monthly session.