Has anyone done an Introduction to Counselling course?

[KittyWalker]

I've just applied to start one in March locally. Did you enjoy it?

I was unlucky with the one (20 hours)I did a few years ago. Some of the participants seemed to think they were there to receive counselling, rather than learn about it. The tutor did not have English as her first language and did not understand the meanings of fairly common words associated with feelings e.g. the words trauma or extreme. I am truly not racist. There was a communication issue between students and teacher.

I also realised, which was not mentioned in any way beforehand, that the route to becoming a qualified counsellor was a very long one and included not only expensive courses for many years but paying for counselling for oneself as part of the qualification.

This course was run by a London Borough Council at an adult education institute so it should have been a little better than I found it.

Sorry to be so negative. I think if I had had enough money to carry along this long road and a better first teacher I would have enjoyed it more and moved on to proper training. I felt pretty cheated to be honest, and also disillusioned.

Oh that's a real shame

I did one and it was great! :)

Still very good friends with one of the women I met on the course 5 years ago! Although I didn't do it to meet friends iykwim!

Also I'm still surprised how useful it was having done it. (I've mentioned it in a successful interview)
Think it adds another dimension....
Hope you enjoy it :)

I hope you enjoy it too. I was just unlucky!

I did a distance learning one a few years ago through NEC (national extension college) At first I found it very hard to get into (probably because it was distance learning so nothing to really motivate me) It took me quite a while to get into it initially but once I'd submitted my first assignment to my tutor and got really good and positive feedback that was the incentive I needed. I completed that course last spring and then started the Developing Counselling skills course, again through NEC.

I've also done a basic counselling skills course based on the samaritans course and am hoping to finish the developing counselling skills course in the next month and will hopefully move onto something else.

pippop, shame you had such a negative experience

I did a cosca course. Found it interesting and challenging. I learned a lot about being a listener and also found that we had to do a lot of self reflection which was challenging at times.

Very expensive if you want to train fully though.