counsellors who are no good at their jobs

[Kim666]

Over the years I have had a few counsellors. My experience is that it's a bit of a myth that there are these wonderful nonjudgmental people out there who just want to help.

I had one who when I mentioned that I'm unemployed she said "As far as I'm concerned, anyone who really wants a job can get one". First of all that's not true, secondly why would she say that?

I know some people will say that all counsellors will be good at their jobs, but they might just not suit you. Some will say that the problem must be with you.

I've heard things about people's experiences of counsellors that make me think there are people doing that job who shouldn't be doing it. A woman who was grieving the loss of a pet was told that she's just being stupid because it's just an animal. The boy who'd been abused who was told several times that when he grew up he would be an abuser too.

I'd like to know other people's experiences. I suspect that articulate middle-class people are less likely to have a problem.

[RunningFromThePastHell]

I'm shocked and saddened by so many of the replies here.

I'm just at the beginning of training to be a counsellor. The training route is: level 2 course, level 3 course, then the big/much longer level 4 course (part time is two years)... at the end of this is the only point where you should be working as a counsellor. (These are vocational courses, all involving actually practising counselling skills.) There's further courses and academic study/degrees you can do, but that's the minimum. (Then of course you'd want to be learning more and keeping skills up to date (CPD) plus having supervision, plus actually following ethical codes and codes of practice to be officially registered as a counsellor.)

So... I'm near the end of level 2. Very very early on in training. But even I can see thay counsellors mentioned on this thread are doing MAJOR things wrong. I'd fail my course for these! Why the hell haven't they been stopped before now?

Huge, huge ethical breaches - wildy breaking confidentiality, victim blaming, "counsellors" with their own huge difficulties projecting onto clients, bullying clients...
Counsellors who never seemed to have learned about basic counselling techniques, or things like transference, so are responding to the client based on their own emotional response. Bloody hell!

Also, one of the things that's been drilled into us from day one is that counselling is not about giving advice. It's about supporting the client to become more aware of themselves, their feelings, what's influencing them, in a supportive environment. (Paraphrasing a bit, only level 2 atm!) So even the relatively minor stuff mentioned on this thread is bad practice!

Are they mostly people who aren't actually trained or accredited? Anyone can call themselves a counsellor or therapist, unfortunately. But some of these examples sound like they're people actually working in official services! They must be qualified, surely? So it's the supervision or some kind of ongoing checking up on them that's missing.

[Sunnysidegold]

I've had a lot of counselling over the years and one totally changed my life for the better.

But.... Two or three stick out in my mind as being not great for me. Maybe someone else would get along with them though.

One I saw as a teen for binge eating. I remember it was in an office and she sat behind a desk and I sat opposite. Felt really weird. She didn't seem to really believe I had a problem and more than once just said "can you just not eat lots of the naughty foods?". It didn't sit well with me.

Another actually benefitted me in many ways and used EMDR very effectively with me. But I went back to her a couple of years later and we had a bit of a catch up at the beginning. Just so I could fill her in. Then she proceeded to tell me all about her new boyfriend and how generous he was. They'd gone to a little boutique and she had tried on lots of things and he whipped out a wad of cash and paid for it all. This was when I was thinking I was so hideous and awful I'd end up alone forever (I so desperately wanted to be loved at that time). I remember thinking "this session is costing my parents £70!". I found it really weird and was such a doormat I couldn't steer it towards more appropriate topics.

The counsellor who helped me most, made me see everything I could do and really just gave me the tools to improve my life. I ended up finishing feeling the best I'd ever felt about myself, and for the first time it wasn't wrapped up in how I looked.

[Rose1965]

Counsellors don't give advice and as I can't find the answers to problems, I feel it's not working and then I'm afraid of being shamed for not making an effort to work out my own answers to problems. I then feel the counsellor is not helping me. What's the point of seeing a counsellor when they say I should help myself when I'm told they are supposed to help me?

[Primaryteach87]

It doesn’t require a high level of training (A level equivalent) to be a counsellor. The best are people with professional or life experience who have then qualified but some really are poor. I’m sorry you e had that experience. Try finding a psychotherapist if you want someone with more training or ask for recommendations.

[Cosmic123]

Some of the weirdest people I've ever met are counsellors.

I've had cbt therapy twice. The first woman was lovely but shit. She clearly did not have the first clue what she was doing. The second one was fantastic and helped me lots.

[Jellycatspyjamas]

Oh - also ask if they have regular supervision and if they don't run, keep running and don't look back.

[Jellycatspyjamas]

In the uk they're generally considered interchangeable - people tend to use therapy or psychotherapy when talking about long term, in depth work or one of the manualised therapies like CBT or DBT. Counselling is sometimes considered more short term, issue specific and superficial but that's not necessarily the case.

I do think training standards across all of the therapeutic professions are too variable - whether that be counsellors, psychotherapists, counselling psychologists, clinical psychologists and too many people think it's an easy way to make money when really it's hard, personally demanding work.

Looking for a therapist, I'd be asking the following questions:-

• what's your core training in e.g. person centred, CBT etc
  
• how long was your training (i.e. Was it a 6 week CBT certificate or a 4 year post grad and Masters)
  
• are you a member of a professional body, which one
  
• what other training have you done
  
• what experience do you have in working with X issues (the thing you're looking for help with)
  
• how do you think your way of working can help me, why do you think that
  
• have you been in therapy yourself
  

The last one is important and a good therapist should be open about it. Any therapist worth their salt will have done extensive work on themself - you can't sit with someone else's darkness if you've not sat with your own. Being in therapy also gives them the experience of being the client, being vulnerable in the relationship with their therapist, how important what you say (or don't say) can be, how anxious folk can get and how they may need help to know how to use therapy to get the best out of it. It also helps to be on the receiving end of the practical arrangements and to properly understand the importance of clear, prompt commumication, a pleasant room, sound proofing, providing decent tissues etc etc

There are, as in any profession, people who shouldn't practice but there are some fantastic people out there really making a difference. A good therapist is, in my view, worth their weight in gold, I'd sweep the streets to pay mine.

[Lellochip]

I've been debating seeing my company's counselor for some recent stress I've been dealing with, but have considered therapy etc for years for general confidence/anxiety etc type of issues.

Once got referred for CBT but the guy I saw was perfectly friendly but just printed off info about what CBT was etc. Never explained how to apply out personally to my own situation so I only lasted a couple of sessions.

How do you know what type of help you need? What's the difference between counseling, therapy etc, or are they fairly interchangeable terms?

[Nonibaloni]

I meant to come back to this thread before. The therapist I saw who said I’d know I didn’t have PND when the baby never cried and advised I spend a lot of time on my own, prefaced it all with “I don’t have children and don’t know much about PND”. So yes technically she covered herself but surely she could have exercised better judgement. I mean I was there to learn to make better decisions.
And she drank coke non stop but never offered me so much as water (that’s got nothing to do with anything but it really stuck)

[YetAnotherNC2017]

Old thread, but...

My counsellor was great. She just got me.

My friend gave up on a different counsellor after a few sessions. She was left paralysed after a car accident, lost her house and job and almost died, spent months in hospital. She had to move back to live near her family. He kept telling her she should find positives in the situation without acknowledging even once that she had every right to feel pissed off at the universe and the hand she’d been dealt through no fault of her own (drunk driver). She had no opportunity to be angry and accept the anger or the loss of her former life. I’ve been more of a counsellor than he was!

The differences in the profession are staggering.

[Viewofhedges]

I went for counselling at a fertility clinic because I was trying to work out if I could go through ivf and to sort out my conflicting feelings about it. Counsellor told me that I couldn’t possibly be unsure about wanting children and that because I had doubts I “shouldn’t bother.” Apparently ‘everyone else is 100% sure and everyone has children in their lives’ (I do not have a single one). She was so judgemental because I wasn’t foaming at the mouth in my desire to have kids (but this was why I wanted to work through my thoughts!!!!) and I think, looking back, her attitude was very harmful to me.

I also think I annoyed her by likening having a child to going on a one way trip to Guatemala (logic being you don’t know what it’s like til you get there but you can’t come back, I was trying to explain what I saw as the absurdity of the decision) and she looked at me like I’d crawled out from under a stone. I don’t think I fitted her idea of mother material....

[deadliestCatch]

I agree with all 3 of the assertions. The third is likely and a very sad fact of life.

Do you really see counsellors because of a dead pet?

[BhajiAllTheWay]

Agree. There are people in my "friendship"group ( use the term loosely) who are training to be counsellors.It seems to be the "in" thing. I honestly cannot imagine how they will empathise and relate to clients... I've had decent ones and others who were of the chocolate fireguard genre but I guess it's like all walks of life, some people have a vocation and are made for the job they choose and some don't.

[Kim666]

You can say that some counsellors and clients don't 'click' but I think counsellors have their favourites, which is not right. If you have an articulate middle-class counsellor who has an articulate middle-class client they may well get on like a house on fire. If the counsellor also has a client who lives in an inner-city bedsit, is socially isolated, has difficulty knowing what to say, has been living off benefits for a long time and worries he may be too obsessed with pornography then the counsellor may get judgmental.

There might not be anyone in that person's life who likes them, then they realize that the counsellor doesn't like them either. That can be very damaging to them, and it may take years before they seek help again, if ever. You might say that the client is misinterpreting what the counsellor has said to them in a negative way.

However, they might not know what to make of the judgmental remarks to begin with. They might think that counsellors are selected and trained to be nonjudgmental. It's only when the judgmental remarks continue and get worse they realize that's not true. The counsellor may decide to stare at the client and not say anything, making the client very uncomfortable.

If they try to tell anyone what has happened they won't be believed. They will be told that no counsellor would say that, they must have distorted what the counsellor said. They will be told there are no bad counsellors, you just didn't click, or you weren't willing to see things from differing perspectives, or you were too emotional to understand what was being said to you.

It would be nice if people unsuitable to be counsellors were weeded out at the training stage. Bad counsellors are not the occasional bad apple though and a bad counsellor is not going to be able to supervise trainee counsellors in such a way that the bad ones get weeded out. A review system wouldn't work because counsellors would get good reviews from their favourites.

I'm not saying that people should not go for counselling, but people should be aware there are some bad ones. If they say something that sounds judgmental or wrong, then ask them to explain what they mean.

[EEkk]

I've known a few therapists in my time.

Some of them awful - in particular those connected to training organisations, the NHS or Colleges.

A couple of diamonds in private practice. Or should I say just one.

[Kim666]

yorkshapudding said When we're distressed it can distort our perception of events and conversations. I think what happens is that people interpret what their counsellor says in the least negative way. They don't want to believe that their counsellor is being judgmental. I know with me I thought to myself "These people are specially selected and trained to be nonjudgmental". The fact is that some people can't resist the temptation to be judgmental, even though the first rule of counselling is not to be.

One of my counsellors really did say to me "As far as I'm concerned, anyone who really wants a job can get one". That's not the worst thing she said.

[Happydays21]

I am a clinical psychologist so that obviously influences my view and Ihtink although you get some crap psychologists working in the NHS the vast majority are ok or better than ok. I think you get a lot of crap counsellors and it is a lottery who you get. When I advise people about getting help I always recommend seeing your GP and getting a referral from them.

[Catwithglasses]

I am aware I would make a rubbish counsellor, but constantly surprised (I meet a lot at work) at the number of not-very-nice people who are doing it. They may be brilliant in the role, but the sides I see mean I would be very uncomfortable if I ever came across one professionally.

[NolongerAnxiousCarer]

I have seen 3 councellors, 2 clinical psychologists, an NLP therapist and a CPN over the years. Each experience has been different but I've been lucky enough that all except one of the psychologists have been very helpful. Most recently I've been treated for PTSD I started seeing my usual councellor who explained to me that she thought I was suffering from PTSD and felt out of her depth, she explained that talking therapies/councelling are not reccommended for PTSD as talking about the trauma can retraumatise the sufferer and that she wanted to refer me to a psychologist, which she did. I feel really lucky that I picked a councellor who was a) able to recognise my PTSD b)able to recognise her own limitations and c) was aware of the potentially damaging effect that she could have.

Unfortunately although I'd had many glowing word of mouth reccomendations about the psychologist she referred me to seeing him was a traumatic and truely awful experience that made me feel much worse. I was bomberded by questions and felt like he was trying to corner me or catch me out. (To be fair he warned me things might get worse before they got better, I just wasn't getting to the getting better bit). He then told me that he didn't think he could help me and that I wasn't ready to deal with the issues (well I thought that was what he had said but he seemed surprised I had interpreted what he said that way) I then saw someone privately with a very different approach who immediately got me feeling dramatically better. When I told the psychologist that I had found someone else and wasn't going to see him again he told me again that I obviously wasn't ready to deal with things and he would be happy to see me again when I was.

I don't think he was unpleasant or bad at his job (although having read the NICE guidelines for PTSD he wasn't following the reccommended treatments) I just think he was the wrong therapist for me at that time and lacked the necessary experience in managing trauma.

Obviously though as others have said there is always a range of experience and aptitude within any proffession.

[Jenna43]

My old neighbour,who was a highly qualified counsellor, was an absolute nightmare of a woman. Her house was absolutely chaotic, I don't mean just a bit untidy, I mean doors lying across the sitting room floor, boxes everywhere, no room to sit anywhere for all the 'stuff'....she told me in all seriousness that she was opening a clinic and working from home(it never happened) but the fact that she thought this was possible horrified me.

She was a narcissist and her whole family were NC with her. She didn't have custody of her 2 oldest kids, the younger child she had in her care was left to run wild. How she manages to hold down a job never mind counsel people, I'll never know. I was so so happy when she left, 10 minutes in this womans company was exhausting.

[opheliacat]

That is the problem really ssd, it is far far too expensive a product to shop around for.

[Damnthatonestaken]

My experience has been that counselors will tell you 'oh but it could be worse' or 'oh but others have it worse' which isn't useful or helpful at all. My friend tells me her counselor was excellent at helping her deal with her emotions after she was attacked, by focusing on strategies my friend could use, rather than simply blaming her

[EnthusiasmIsDisturbed]

I am sorry you have been put off

I personally do not believe counselling is for every one but for many good counselling can be very beneficial

Sparkle is it not unusual at all for clients not to know what to say some clients will hardly talk in their first few sessions it can be very uncomfortable for them gentle coaxing is sometimes needed

[Toddlerteaplease]

I got compared to Beverly Allit by a psychiatrist years ago, because I was a self harmer and a children’s nurse. I was so shocked and gobsmacked by that I could t react to it at the time. I wish I’d made a formal complaint at the time. But didn’t think anyone would believe me. An occupational health doctor looked when I told him. And asked if that was what she’d actually said. Err yes it was! Turns out that she’d been involved in the Allit inquiry.

[sparklefarts]

Been put off for life by the one I saw when I was 17. I was young and had no idea what to say. When I said I wasn't sure what to say, her response was 'well what's the point in being here then'
Never went back.

Many years later and I still think I'd need some prompting to get me to start talking or know where to start so I figure it's just not for me...