Retraining as a therapist/counsellor - any advice?

[Studentforlife]

Any advice on retraining to become a therapist/counsellor?

Cost, where you trained, time took to do it, worth switching so late in life?

At 51 is it worth it? I have life experience behind me, a lot of it, and feel that you can probably work as a therapist until you can't speak or hear anymore...into your 70s if you want to. In a flexible working environment that, once you've built up a practice, could even be your own.

Interested on people's thoughts. Positive and negative. Thanks.

I do. I know other psychotherapists who do too. You need to be sought after though. So it is helpful to train in a niche area. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money to be well enough qualified to pull it off though.

Yep. Notice the use of the word ‘ethically’ in @popyourcollar’s post. :)

If you’re up for practising unethically there’s apparently no shortage of gullible people out there you can con, especially if you can manage to tap into the Middle American market. Advertising on FB would be a good start.

@AnnieApple123 Not too sure what I've missed exactly? I think we are all big enough girls to realise one would need to set up their practice ethically :) There are plenty of opportunities outside of traditional counselling..all very ethical, robust and well regulated.

Plenty of people do work unethically with no training or supervision. Some of them do very well and are very fulfilled. Nobody has any power to stop them.

Hello, I'm really interested in finding out about this if you could message me? I'm in my second year of a counselling diploma and wondering where to go next

It's very hard to make a living as a therapist. £40 an hour or more might seem a lot but you have to pay for room hire, insurance, supervision, membership fees, continuous development, plus you're running a business so you ave all the marketing, admin, accounting, following up client enquiries etc. It's a lot.

I’ve ever seen a counsellor offering less than £65 an hour, and that’s at the very cheaper end.

@AnnieApple123 Absolutely, nothing new there and certainly not unique to psychotherapy. I'm pretty sure the poster is clued up on what it is to be an ethical doesn't seem like she's the person to do a counselling certificate on udemy and set up as a practitioner.

My post is to highlight that there are therapeutic (and ethical!) opportunities beyond the BACP.

Tbh, beyond those people who really are psychologically/psychiatrically unwell (and those people should really be getting help from medical professionals anyway), it’s up to the individual to decide who they get their “wellbeing support” from. Yes, there should be some sort of regulation to help guide people but, as long as the practitioners aren’t offering cures for medical problems, people have the right to make their own decisions.
The major problem is convincing potential clients that they need to be paying several hundred pounds a month for therapy when they’re not ill-just a bit lost, sad or grieving. Hence the crowded marketplace.

@JennieTheZebra Yes, I know of a woman who claims she can communicate with Jesus Christ himself. She does very well as a healer and has lots of clients from the US she picked up on IG. She’s constantly posting testimonials from people saying she’s completely turned their lives around.

I personally think this is blasphemy but what are you doing to do about it? Ring the police?

@Studentforlife ooo another thing to look at as coaching. NHS PCNs (GP surgeries) are taking on health and wellbeing coaches. If you land a role the surgery will be funded to provide you with a PCI accredited coach training. If you were interested you could get ahead of the game and self fund a course (they are not expensive) and see what happens!

Also, coaching in general. You will read much negativity about life coaching and similar but usually it is from people who literally know nothing about this modality. If you have an area of interest or expertise eg) alcohol recovery, chronic illness, somatic trauma etc then you could tailor private practice around that.

The ICF is considered the gold standard in the coaching world, although much like the BACP, there are many other respected accrediting bodies. If you prefer something more therapeutic in approach you could look at Adler coaching, Jungian coaching, cognitive behavioural coaching etc....the list is endless!

As an aside, my friend trained as a surgical nurse in her mid fifties. She spends 40 hours a week in theatre as a scrub nurse now. Bloody loves it. You are NEVER too old. Good luck!

@AnnieApple123
Like you that makes me extremely uncomfortable and I think it’s unethical, but the core idea of capacity is that people have to be able to make stupid decisions. Offering a service to the worried well is not a crime.
Now, if it was one of my extremely unwell service users that was seeing this “practitioner” I’d be substantially more unhappy, as they really are very vulnerable, but most of them have capacity so even then…

What do people move "up" to as a pwp?

I've sometimes been tempted by the ads (Psych graduate) but didn't think I'd want to churn through cbt phonecards day in day out forever. If it can move on from that I might be more interested?

From the outside it sometimes seems iapt is a 6 week cbt sticking plaster but doesn't seem to offer what people need but that may just be the people I work with!

The other one I looked at was Education Wellbeing Practioners that are funded at the moment.

I have limitations that mean I can't do full time now though so I keep reaching dead ends!

@JennieTheZebra I don't think it's down to me to judge who they see or what they do. Likewise if they find sessions valuable who are we to contradict this. Like you say most people have capacity and most practitioners are trained to refer people on if they do not have the skills to assist them.

That being said,- I have met people poorly trained and, I'd like to think, they don't get the repeat trade or recommendations. Their is exploitation in all industries, I really don't think having a BACP registration guarantees an ethical practitioner either.

@Youdoyoudoyou
I agree. If people find it helpful then that’s fine by me. As I said, people who have capacity can do what they like up to a point and if they get something out of it that’s great. They can choose how they spend their money and I would hope that the therapists suggest that people who are potentially unwell see their GP.
I think that when it comes to people like my service users (people with severe PDs) this gets a bit messier. It’s not exactly “judging” but I do think that they’re very vulnerable to exploitation, even if they do have capacity. Capacity is a spectrum after all. I think if one my patients was seeing, for example, the Jesus Christ lady mentioned above and it was costing them a lot of money then I would probably make a safe guarding report. Even if nothing comes of it I would still feel happier for having it looked at.
I agree that a BACP registration isn’t foolproof but I would hope that someone who is BACP registered wouldn’t deliberately target the very vulnerable or pretend to offer something that they can’t provide/isn’t true.

.

Thanks a lot everyone, really useful insights and comments. Especially the differences therapists, counsellors, coaching etc

I think IAPT is a 6 wk cbt sticking plaster yes, appropriate or not, & often poorly administered. I trained as a Counsellor many years ago. Had 2 asd children so was out of Practice for a long time.
I decided to re enter the workforce via the IAPT system as at least that would give me relevant NHS approved training, paid holidays, pension etc.
It was awful. I couldn't practice in an ethical manner. It wasn't just my workplace it was the training too. The rot goes all the way to the top in IAPT.

I recently got my Masters in counselling and spent £15,000 on it (supervision, tuition fees, interest accrued from the loan, and a lot of personal therapy). There was no question of me doing a Level 4 or 5 diploma because I felt that having a post graduate qualification and one that's BACP accredited would discern me from the masses of counsellors out there with their diploma's from FE colleges. And, honestly, it's a better qualification that will open a lot of doors. I'm currently considering my options and still doing my normal job. I feel changed as a person, for the better, as a result of the training and therapy and that alone is priceless.

You can certainly make a good living from PP. Most of my peers who exited the course with their PG Diploma's and in PP are doing really well and as has been noted here, location is really important (they practice in 'mumsnetty' areas). Quite a few are working in the NHS (but they had a lot of experience before they applied - 400+ hours).

Wishing you all the best.

This is the route the BACP recommend for training:

www.bacp.co.uk/careers/careers-in-counselling/training/

Hi! Trainee counsellor here. I’m 3 years into a 4 year study programme and loving it! It’s expensive, time consuming and hard work. BUT so worth it!

I recommend you do a course accredited by the BACP or UKCP. The training varies out there but these are going to be the best training providers.

You would work in placement as a therapist (for free) during your qualification and will have personal therapy for the duration of the course. It really is life changing. Good luck on your journey!

Training through “in the job” in the NHS is only available in any trust I know to staff with a professional qualification and suitable experience. The diploma CBT course in Scotland currently stands at 10k so would never be available to anyone without these criteria.
My advice to anyone wanting to move into this work is to really ask yourself why you want to do this? It’s really not enough to base in personal experience. Working with peoples distress is the hardest thing as you always have to be prepared to hear things that are hard to hear

I wonder why a level 4 or 5 diploma was out if the question? I'm about to start my level 4 with a bacp accredited provider.

a level 4 qualification would be out for me because it covers so little and doesn’t prepare you for the work. Im doing the MSc and a number of people are doing this having already done prior qualification. I didn’t see the point in doing something and then retraining again after.