To think I can become an Counselors or Psychologist?

[Mesomeplace]

Hi mums go easy please. I am 42 and have four children. I left an abusive marriage and a controlling religion. I have never been allowed to go to university due to my religion and my husband stopped me working 10 years ago.

I share child care with my ex and I am deeply interested in psychology and or counseling. I am so grateful for the help I was given and would like to help others in the same way. I also have the problem of now earning money. I have a window of 6 years where I could study and fund myself so I have been looking into retraining. I know it will be hard. I really want to re start my life and be the person I should have been if my options were not taken away.

Any help is massively appreciated. I have looked into either a level 2 and 3 in counselling at my local college. As I have this window however I thought why not go for it and go to uni instead and study counselling with psychology.

Any advice gratefully received

Have a look at the Open University.

There are lots of other people in your exact circumstances that study successfully with the OU.

You could do one module a year or do the two and see how you get on. It's very flexible and once you find your groove it can fit in really easily with other commitments.

Go for it! Good luck. I'm not sure why you need the validation of others, but it's perfectly fine for you to go to uni if you have the time and the money for it. It sounds like you'd be an excellent student.

Have you looked at the open university? I did a masters with them a few years ago and they are AMAZING - incredibly supportive of student parents/mature students/students without traditional qualifications.

They’re also very well respected and their psychology degree is accredited by the BPA (which is essential if you want to practice as a psychologist)

If you’ve never done a degree, you can get a student loan so you won’t need to pay anything until you’re earning over a certain amount afterwards (I think it’s currently 21k)

www.open.ac.uk/courses/psychology/degrees/bsc-psychology-q07
(Sorry don’t know how to do clicky link)

You can do anything that you put your mind to, look at what you have already achieved .

Could you look into some online training whilst you are on lockdown?

Shout are looking for volunteers if you fancy getting practical experience (you help people who are in crisis over text, it's done from home) the training is free and it's a very supportive place to volunteer. :) it was set up with support from a few of the royals.

www.giveusashout.org/volunteer-with-us/

Our local college ran a free of charge 10 week introductinon to Counselling.

I attended and found it extremely interesting. I am on the list for the level 2 course.

You don't need a University degree but they do ask for a good standard of literacy as there is a lot of written work.

If you are on benefits you should get some, or all, of your course fees paid.

In the first instance though I would contact your local FE college and find out if they offer the Introduction to Counselling.

Good luck.

If you’re thinking of counselling or psychotherapy you can’t study at a distance, to register with one of the registering bodies you need face to face training hours and practice placement. You can study psychology through distance learning but a psychology degree won’t qualify you To practice as a psychologist.

There’s no reason why you couldn’t train, qualify and have a good career but look for face to face training, with a practice placement if you want to do counselling/psychotherapy or a degree in counselling psychology. If you study psychology you’ll need post grad study to practice as a psychologist which may not fit your timescale. Good luck.

Well done for breaking free from abuse. .

I have friends who have tried to become psychologists. After your undergrad degree, you have to do a doctorate. It ha extremely competitive to get onto the course and can take several attempts.

I looked into training as a counsellor myself, there are several layers of training to complete. I decided it was not for me.

Have you thought about other ways to put your passion into action? Eg working for a domestic violence charity? Support worker? Social worker?

Go for it.

Not sure about psychology but there really isn’t a great deal of paid work in counselling. Many counsellors work part time with another job. Obviously you can go into private practice but that is again that can take time to build up your client base, so many people again do it working part time.
You have to work around 450 unpaid hours to get accreditation to the BACP (this includes after qualification) - which means many organisations only use volunteer counsellors.
Fee free to IM me if you want any more info.

As a qualified therapist. I agree it’s a very interesting kind of work. Be aware you may need to spend years not earning at all, and most likely funding your own training and personal therapy before you qualify, in many types of therapy or counselling. I would also look carefully at which types of therapists and counsellors are getting paid work in your area as earning a living can be hard. There are many different courses and qualifications so choose carefully.

Look at job vacancies for the job you want and make sure you get the right qualifications for those jobs.

Hi OP there's been a lot of threads recently regarding this so if you do a search you'll find lots of useful info. Here's what I wrote on a recent thread:

I have a Psychology degree. I'm going to be honest. It's a science, it's damn hard, intellectually demanding and there's loads of very hard maths in the form of statistics and loads of focus on research methods. A psy degree alone gets you nowhere in terms of a job but is a step along the line to being a psychologist (e.g DClinPsych) which is even harder, very very competitive, expensive and you will be earning little to nothing for years.

After 6 years of getting nowhere with my psy degree I did my law conversion and am now a lawyer.

Do your research. Try and work our what kind of psychologist you want to be a go from there. I'll be honest if you are interested in counselling I'd go down that route. Easier, cheaper, quicker, more likely to be what interests you.

I should have said sorry, there is work if you’re willing to put a lot of time in and work part time.
Given your history, you have the potential to work with great empathy and understanding from lived experience.

Obviously just doing a psychology degree doesn’t make you a psychologist. You’d need a good psychology degree, then a doctorate which are hard to get onto, another 3+ years of study, can be v expensive and are obviously only for the fans of academia (80,000 word thesis).

I looked into counselling training recently and it seemed extremely expensive!

If you want to practice as a counsellor or even a psychologist (you'd need a degree + postgraduate quals) then you need to be in the right place mentally. But you will find that out once you start training.

If you go down the degree route with a (BSc hons/BPA accredited) psychology degree then it will you many other options if you decide not to pursue the counselling route. You could go in to marketing, research, teaching, user design or even accounting if you so wish. Its broad degree and one which allows you to discover new interests as its applicable to many areas of life.

there's loads of very hard maths in the form of statistics and loads of focus on research methods

Pah! I would say that's by far the easiest part of the degree. Not a fan of the cognitive and physiological aspect. Mind boggling indeed.

@mamanyoga haha! As someone with English, law and sociology A-Levels and a complete ineptitude at maths I have to say the stats was horrifying. We had to do T-Tests and Chi Squareds in long hand with a pencil as the Uni only had 3 computers with SPSS on it!

I hated the cognitive stuff and social psychology, weirdly given my background but loved loved loved the physiology, abnormal and neuropsychology aspects!

Have you thought about doing mental health nursing? I think that would be an interesting and rewarding career and after your 3 years at uni you'd walk into a job. The problem with psychology and counselling are that lots of people are interested in them and as a result it can be very difficult to find work using your degree. I know lots of psychology graduates who haven't been able to use their degree. In fact some of them then did mental health nursing as a way into.using their degrees. Sorry if this sounds negative but it's something I've looked into and considered myself but I've been put off by the lack of job prospects. If you wanted to do mental health nursing then most colleges will do some kind of health access course and then you do 3 years at uni / placement after that. You could always do a counselling course part time once you'd finished your degree and this would feed into your work as a psychiatric nurse.

I’m a psychologist, and lecture at a university.
Have a good, thorough look on what studying psychology includes - loads of statistics, physiology etc
A lot of people start psychology because they are interested in helping people, the ones who fail usually didn’t have a clue that psychology is a lot more than that.
think what exactly you want to do, and then choose - there is a lot of things like social work.

I teach on a psychology degree. The amount of statistics and research methods is probably the thing students complain about most. It’s about a third of your degree directly, and is heavily used in many of the other modules such as cog. sci. etc. A 3 year psych degree, assuming you get a good degree, will make you eligible to apply for a 3 year postgrad degree, though they are competitive and you will likely need a years work experience first. I’m not saying don’t do it, but have a think about what you want to achieve and base your decision on that. A good place to start would be your local college who will likely run a range of courses including introductions to psychology and counselling and will help you think about your longer term plans.

To add to the above. Qualifying as a psychologist is near impossible due to lack of training places and the length of study required.

Counselling isn't a career known for paying the bills. People often do it as a side job or as a volunteer.

In your position I would focus on what sort of work you are good at and enjoy to a reasonable extent, based on your past experience. Look at careers with good progression and salaries around that past experience. By all means volunteer in a "helping people" capacity but in terms of earning money you (and DC) are much better served by looking for a flexible, decently paid office job.

Try "what colour is your parachute" type exercises to figure out what sort of jobs might suit you. Prospects.ac.uk is a good one too with profiles of different jobs.

Counselling is by the better idea; very versatile qualification. Psychology is a long and competitive road. Good luck.