Awful counselling.....how do you find the right person?

[SunSunSun]

I have been going to counselling for a few months now. I have a lot of issues to get through. I work full time, have 3 school aged children and have a husband who works full time so my time is incredibly precious.

I have been going once a week, for an hour and had to move heaven and earth to clear this space every week (with work, dh, kids, nanny etc.).

Except, the counsellor is hopeless. I'm getting no insights at all. In fact, a lot of the time, we sit there in awkward silence. He spends a lot of time looking shocked at what I have been through (I must admit, some of it is bad) and how I have turned out ok.

He came highly recommended, has a qualification but it is obvious the two of us don't gel and it isn't working. I have written a letter today paying for 2 more sessions (which I won't turn up to) and just making an excuse saying it is too difficult to keep turning up regularly.

But where do I go from here? I can look someone else up on the internet but there's no guarantee they will be good either and it hurts having to tell people what is wrong and then find out it's not going to work iyswim. So I don't want to keep going through this process.

I must admit, I had quite a jaded view of counselling to start with but I really did make an effort because I recognise that I need and probably should talk through a lot of what happened. I am also quite a strong character and I do tend to be quite insightful anyway.

Has anyone else been through a similar thing or have any insights for me?

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Is this man qualified? He should not be making any indication that he is shocked at all!

Personal recommendation? Do any of your friends know you are in counselling who could recommend someone?

It depends on what sort of issues you need to deal with. If it is anything to do with your childhood then I would recommend looking at Alice Miller's website (do a google). She is an expert on childhood traumas and has a list of questions on her website to ask a potential counsellor in order to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I kind of fell into mine so not terribly helpful from that POV, but I can sympathise because I have experienced some useless ones for me (i am quite tough to get through to).

I think your best bet might be to look into different types of therapy and see which suits you, and then go from there, maybe meet someone and discuss things before you sign up for more sessions?

I am having transactional analysis which I have found useful but everyone is different I know.

Good luck.

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sounds like you need a psychotherapist rather than a counsellor - there is a huge difference. Pyschotherapists will challenge your thoughts/belief rather than just sit and listen like a counsellor does IME

My DH desperately needed help a few years ago, and we had to pay for him to see someone- no insurance and no available NHS service in our area. The man was useless. He turned up late, never seemed to read his notes and didn't help my DH at all. He was a consultant psychologist and charged over £100/hour.

My DH finally told me that the man wasn't helping when after 7 sessions he mentioned the reason he was seeing the man in passing during a session, and the man claimed my DH had never told him this. Then the man checked his notes fronm the first session and surprise surprise, yes my DH had told him!

A few months afterwards, we looked again for someone and found a wonderful man who's helped my DH to start to feel good about himself and come to terms with the past.

The only advice I can give is don't give up trying to find a counsellor who's right for you, and don't be afraid to stop seeing one when you don't feel they are giving you the help you need.

Trial and error. Also remember anyone can set themselvse up doing this kind of thing.
My sister is a chartered clinical psychologist and very good but some of them aren't and even if they are good sometimes people just don't get on with some people through no fault on either side.

Oh yes. I found counselling not very good for me because it seemed to be (although i suspect it may have been the person I saw) them just repeating what i said. I think the focus of counselling seems to be helping you talk through things yourself by facilitating and listening.
My therapy does give me answers and he offers much needed opinions and insight.

Where are you? I can recommend someone in West London. However, as others have said, you really need to meet the person and see if you gel. DO NOT feel obligated to pay for sessions that you have not attended. It's a very personal interaction and you should feel totally comfortable with the person.

This one is a psychotherapist. I find, like cargirl and smurfgirl said though, that this one just wants to sit and listen and um and ah as if all I want to do is get it out. But that's not it at all. I think the people who recommended him to me may actually be the sort of people who just needed a 'kind' ear iyswim. Whereas a kind ear is not what I want and I do have some quite complicated and involved issues and I'd like to get someone else's insight into them and why they may have affected me the way they have done.

So can you call people up and say 'I'd like to come and just have a chat and see what you are like' to counsellors/psychologists? Maybe this is the tack I should try.

Thanks Sofia. That's not the right area for me unfortunately.

I'm not sure I have it in me to go through loads of people though. I imagine I'll just lose faith. I'm not in desperate need but have been told by lots of people (some of the incidents involved the police and social services) that it's a process I should go through at some stage and at the moment, I do feel it's the right time for me.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

Yes, I believe you can book a couple people to visit, and then make a choice. I think they may charge you for the trial visit, but there's nothing wrong with shopping around a bit.

To be fair, I don't think counsellors generally give you insight, because insights other people give you don't work. You need to find them insight yourself, they just help give you the time and space to work things out.

maybe counselling isn't for me then....I had a sneaking suspicion it might not be...

as I said below, I'm quite insightful but what I find hard is putting together what happened to me in the past and the person I am today because it's obviously affected 'who I am' but there are some behaviours I have now that I know have developed as a result of things that happened in the past and I'd like to have someone else's input into why this has happened (I mean why I responded that way) and maybe ways I can start to address these things.

I've not heard of Alice Miller. I'll look on her website. Maybe I should just read some books on the topic.

Hmm, some counsellors provide a bit of insight, but I think they generally prefer that you work it out yourself. From what I know, if someone just says 'oh, you're like this because of this', then you will reject it, but if you see the logic yourself, then it fits.

If you can focus on how you're feeling when you're behaving in a way you don't like, listen to whatever internal voices are talking to you, and think about what it reminds you of from your childhood, maybe that will help? (This is the sort of insight counsellors are likely to give, rather than just saying, glibly, 'oh, it's because of X', iyswim.)

if I could work it out myself, I wouldn't need to go to counselling though. I can understand them not telling me 'you're doing this because of this' but even just guiding me in the right direction or 'don't you think this might be happening because of this' would be more instructive.

Right, but counselling aims to turn you into someone who can work these things out for herself, who is good at listening to themselves, and thinks clearly about why they (and other people) are doing the things they're doing.

Thing is, sorting one's head out isn't a task that is ever done. If a counsellor can give you the tools that help you think clearly, and understand (and accept!) your emotions, then they're achieved a lot more than they would if they just sat you down and said 'you are afraid of X because of Y, and so you do Z'.

then I think I won't bother because this what was he was trying to do maybe this bloke but it was so softly softly that it would have taken me a year to have an insight and I probably would have got the same insight by setting aside an hour each week and staring at the wall which maybe I will do (set aside an hour a week to just think) and see what happens.

sounds like you might need a person-centred psychotherapist. look at www.bacp.org.uk to find one who's fully accredited by the BACP. A highly trained one will also have UKCP accreditation. You will find one you click with, but may have to have a trial session with two or three first. It's worth also looking at the nearest training institution on the BACP website and asking them for a recommendation - often a tutor who does private work too.It would be a shame for you not to continue as you sound committed to the process, you just haven't found the right therapist.

In my experience, counselling is not a quick process. How quickly did you think it would take before you got some "answers"?

It took me a year of counselling to even begin to come to terms with some of my issues. Like NQC said - I have become someone who can work these things out for myself, but not until I had spent a long time hearing myself say things out loud, seeing what it felt like to hear those things said, and then going away and spending a lot more time thinking about it again before the next session.

It was really, really hard work. I expended a huge amount of emotional energy on it. It wasn't just the 1 hour a week.

I don't know how quickly I thought it would work but I thought by now I might have started getting somewhere rather than getting nowhere at all. I lost faith in this bloke and just didn't feel I wanted to talk to him anymore - I don't know.

I haven't got a huge amount of time on my hands though half the reason I wanted to go to counselling is that I've found myself thinking about everything a lot more than I ever have done so.

Which area are you in sunsunsun...I am a psychotherapist and might be able to recommend someone . Tha kind of therapy I do is quite challenging - but it is timebound - usually 16/24 sessions. Totally agree with others about meeting with a therapist first to see if you click.

I've had group psychotherapy and then individual and it was quite different to what you have reported back. I found it very very hard work emotionally but I did make huge progress but I know other people from the group didn't but perhaps because they either weren't in the right place mentally/emotionally or weren't at that time prepared to put in the work.

Yes you have to be comfortable with the person and you're clearly not with the person you've been seeing and yes when you're paying you are more than entitled to have an initial appointment with someone before committing to further treatment with them.

I was fortunate I got NHS help (well I'm not sure having a nerous breakdown was fortunate ) and the therapy has helped me come to terms with my past.

Two questions:

1. How many times have you seen this man in total?

1. What was it that prompted you to seek help now - ie, was there a specific event, or series of events?

IME, psychotherapy takes a good bit of time, and alot of work (much of it painful and/or frustrating before/as you make progress). He may not be the right person for you, but you also may have not spent enough time talking for him to see behavioural patterns emerging and bring them to your attention.

Also ime, psychotherapy is quite an intensive, lengthy (and valuable) process, and most analysts would want to see you more than once a week in order to help you recognise issues and change thoughts/behaviour.

It sounds as if simply deciding to go to an analyst and making time in your schedule was a big thing for you, and now you're expecting quick results simply by being in the room. It's not a fast process, and you must leave all thoughts of 'productivity' behind (difficult to do for a driven/results oriented person - which I'm guessing you are).

I think you should go back, and explain your frustrations to him. Did you ever have an initial conversation about the process of analysis and your expectations? Perhaps you need to back up and have that chat now. Also, perhaps it is worth looking at why you seem so angry with this man and what is behind that.

Good luck - if you persevere (whether with this man, or with someone else), it will change your life in a wonderful way.

there's no way I can do more than once a week - and this isn't a lack of committment on my part but this is just real life. A full time job which I need to make ends meet, children, a husband etc. Even finding a regular hour was difficult.

I'm not cross or angry with him at all but I do feel I have invested a lot in this (also money wise, it was very expensive). We just haven't clicked. Yes, we had a chat about expectations but I feel frustrated about going there and just, well, sitting there.

I am not necessarily looking for quick results but I'd hoped by now that, at least, I would either a) be in the situation where I'd want to go b) feel like I had clicked c) feel like I wanted to talk to the therapist and share but I feel none of those things and it's not like I can't talk about this stuff. I can talk about most of it to anyone but I find myself not wanting to talk to him because his reactions are so annoying.