What is the thing that put you off your counsellor?

[Springchickenhatching]

I am just wondering. I’ve been having some counselling about a family issue. Talking about family member who is autistic, she insisted that ‘most ND are bisexual ‘. The person concerned is definitely heterosexual and she wouldn’t accept that. It had nothing to do with the issue anyway! Just so odd.

The thing that would most put me off a counsellor would be someone who hasn't been in that industry from the beginning.

So for me, a counsellor is someone who went to uni, studied the subject, qualified and worked in a professional organisation.

Unfortunately where I live, lots of divorced women whose friends have told them "they are really good listeners" have taken a online counselling course and set themselves up in business to make a nice little "genteel" income for themslves .They are rubbish.

Wow, so specific!

In my case it would be shallowness and lack of genuine curiosity.

As a trainee counsellor I'd say that you are not going to gel with each counsellor and they practice in different modalities so you need to find one that suits you. The counselling sector are working to tighten up the industry as currently Counsellor is not a protected profession so anyone can set themselves up in practice. To avoid this check your counsellor is registered with either the BACP or NCPS. To be registered you need to have gone through extensive training and done at least 100 hours counselling on placement.

I’ve had a few & generally been very lucky. But one lady crossed professional boundaries by confiding in me about major problems with her 12 year old daughter. It didn’t help that DH had also been allocated to her!

Once went to Relate with now exh... I wanted to 'prove' to h we were over.. The man wore socks with sandals and told me I had hang ups about sex... Eh no I just wanted out of a cc relationship

Never trust a man who wears socks with sandals ime... .

Ones that have a false, simpering “sympathetic” expression. I call them ‘nodding dogs’. It really puts me right off.

My last counselling series was due to DHs infertility and my bereavement over never being a mum after also being turned down for adoption. Long process. Years of trauma tbh.

She kept telling me about her own "miracle baby" conceived after a "couple of months" of trying where she was "so worried" about her fertility and how she understood me.

I was furious. She kept on about this being some special adaptive form of counselling, but I felt like a fool.

Yes she was BACP. Provided on the NHS no less.

For me the 'danger' signs would be:

Dishes out advice without really working to help the client find their own solution, and without being directly asked for it

Doesn't offer a trial/chemistry session or two so you can get a feel for whether you can work well together

Qualifications consist of 'life experience' and a certificate from an online academy that quality assures its own training

Never challenges the client in any way

Very restricted range of techniques or therapies - its one thing to specialise, it's quite another to ONLY be able to work in one style of output regardless of client needs

Very fixed ideas about what they will and won't deal with - fair enough having a couple of things that you know are personal triggers that you warn clients you might not be able to help them with, quite another when you get the twits who've done a very restricted amount of training and panic when someone starts talking about their wider issues not the thing they thought they needed counselling for (in reality it usually turns out to be a whole tangle of underlying 'stuff')

Their voice, I had one that was like listening to chalk on a board, I was wincing everytime they opened their mouth it was distracting and painful.
Shame because they were nice but good grief I couldn't continue.

Bad manners, grumpy and not interested. Luckily they came across as such on the initial call so didn't continue.

You can’t take an online counselling course. It’s not possible to qualify without face to face contact and experience of placements .

That ignorant comment would immediately put me off too, OP. I’ve been v lucky with BACP qualified counsellors.

@PaintDecisions that’s awful! Inappropriate. Grounds for a complaint to the organisation she works for.

Counsellor isn’t a protected title. You don’t need any qualifications to set yourself up as one. So it is possible for people to do an online course and then set themselves up as a private counsellor.

That just isn’t true.

This sounds very similar to someone I saw after a break up - tried to tell me I was the issue because of sex, which I hadn't mentioned at all and really was not a factor! Also wore socks and sandals (are you in SE?!).

I just had some via Talking Therapies and the lady shouted at me that I wasn't putting any effort in when I said I couldn't afford petrol to drive to see her and pay for parking every week (she had no qualifications which was quite eye opening). I shut down completely and told them I didn't need any more help. I keep trying to get decent help on NHS but they always seem to want to give you CBT even though I have had it before and it hasn't worked! Is it the cheapest by any chance?

Not counselled, psychiatric nurse acting in a therapeutic capacity, but I was talking about some stuff with my dad from my teen years and she said 'wow I can't imagine my dad acting like that'

I never went back

Being told my views on trans women being Men was a belief system something, don't think I can remember how she actually phrased it.

@Springchickenhatching many therapists do take online courses and certificates. Counselling is not a protected title, so anyone can legally advertise themselves as a counsellor or therapist with either zero training or shady online certificates.

@Springchickenhatching noticed you replied to someone else stating the same thing I did, saying that it wasn't true.

It absolutely is true. Unless you're not in the UK where it is actually a protected title?

Yes, exactly. Check accreditation, though that doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot, either. In my home country, you can still be accredited by the equivalent of the BACP if you haven’t qualified from a BACP-accredited course, by doing more client hours, more supervision hours, and jumping through extra hoops etc.

I have been put off by a therapist being younger than me. She was good, but the dynamic didn’t work for me.

I had a few underwhelming encounters when I accessed therapy via my employer’s EAP in the early 2000s. One got me to do a Myers-Briggs test in the first session and got all huffy when I said it was pseudoscientific horseshit and why didn’t we actually talk. Another looked at me and bleated ‘Ahm you’re very hard on yourself’.

In situations like these I always need to be able to feel I can speak completely openly with the other person. If I can't I usually conclude they are not the right person for this situation.

@FurzeNotGorse Another looked at me and bleated ‘Ahm you’re very hard on yourself’.

I don't think it's unusual for a counsellor to comment when they notice that a client is very self critical. It has a huge part to play in anxiety and depression, and was probably an invitation to you to explore the way you see yourself and where that comes from.

No, she was tutting and ‘mammying’, not inviting me to probe the roots of my own self-criticism. We just came from different worlds.

God, so much. I've had a fair few counsellors over the years.
One of them consistently nodded along and went "Mhm, mhm" every time I said a few words. She also checked the time on her watch repeatedly, which I half understood because we only had an hour, but she checked that often that I started to think I smelled bad or something 😂

Another one was a PTSD counsellor. She asked me why I was there, what had happened etc and when I started explaining, she said I couldn't trauma dump on her like that and I should have said "traumatic event" instead of what actually happened.

My most recent one hasn't happened yet as I'm still waiting, but I contacted them to ask how much longer I would be waiting. I received a quite abrupt email response that other people need appointments too, and there's a long wait list. Going on to say I might have to wait a maximum of 12 months and they'd like me to be patient.
I've been waiting 15 months so far and it's the first time I've queried the wait time.

'She kept telling me about her own "miracle baby" conceived after a "couple of months" of trying where she was "so worried" about her fertility and how she understood me.'

Jesus actual Christ. That is truly appalling. Not surprised you were absolutely fuming

I saw a wonderful psychotherapist (not counsellor) for 7 years and I didn't know a single thing about her. She shared absolutely nothing about her life with me, and that's as it should be