i really want to do something envolved with counseling

[nikcola]

does anyone no ho i go about it i have look at local college courses but they dont start untill next sept does anyone have any advice xx

Make sure any course you go on is BACP recognised, otherwise you'll be wasting your time and money IME. (That's the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) In the meantime, get yourself some experience of using listening skills - contact your local volunteer bureau (your local council for voluntary services will have details of volunteering opportunities in your neighbourhood) as even doing a Basic Introduction to Counselling course will require you to do 'homework' writing about ways you have used your counselling skills every week. It can be tough to find enough examples (unless you've got very needy friends, LOL) so getting some volunteering work in a setting ewhre you might have a chance to 'listen' to people is an excellent head start.
Also, start saving! Counselling training is quite expensive as you have to have counselling yourself as part of the training - which is obviously going to cost you - low-cost counselling is few and far between.

Depends how far you want to take it. I agree with fmf, the best place to start is a 10-wk Intro to Counselling course - you should be able to find an evening course somewhere near you, maybe starting after Christmas or Easter. That will give you a taster before the "real thing"

The more advanced training is quite serious. If you take it all the way to the Diploma, you will need to have your own counselling, supervision etc. and pay for it, and find the time to see clients as a trainee, but if you are interested in something like Cruse or Relate type counselling, you can stop before then and do the organisation-specific course.

Expect to have to get all your own skeletons out of the close and go through the mill a bit emotionally during the training

HTH.

Find out from your local college if they do an introduction to counselling course. This course will be about 6-7 weeks and will give you an insight into what counselling actually involves. You do not need any experience of counselling to do this, as the journal writing for the introduction is about what you have learned/how your approach is changing throughout the course. This course will give you a very good idea of what is involved in becoming a counsellor. A lot of people go into the introduction course and generally not all complete that course or go on to the next level.

The course generally runs as follows:

Introduction to counselling
Then stage 2 counselling skills certificate
Then stage 3 counselling skills and practice
And then the diploma ? this is the longest part and generally takes about two years.

The whole process will take about ¾ years dependent on your college and how often they run the courses. During stage 3 you will be required to go into therapy, or this could happen sooner if your tutor feels that you would benefit from therapy. The reason for this is firstly so that you gain empathy with your future clients, and gain and understanding of how it feels to be counselled, and secondly it is to ensure that you have dealt with any issues in your own life, so that they don?t come up in a client/counsellor setting in the future.

Counselling is hard, it is non judgmental, and you will not be giving any advice as a counsellor. And counselling changes people, my tutor said that a lot of relationships break down during counselling training, because the partner finds it hard to deal with how the counselling trainee changes.

I have only done the introduction to counselling but I intend to go on and do stages 2/3 and then a diploma. I am under no illusions as to how much work it is going to be.

hth

For the courses I know of, your own counselling doesn't start until the Diploma. You will need to check exactly what is involved in each stage where you are.

echo fullmoonfield.

a BACP accredited course is essential.

at the moment anyone can call themselves a counsellor, but that is set to change in the next couple of years.

four years is usual, it is expensive (you need to accrue client hours after the first year 450 of them and that is 450 unpaid hours of work.

you also need to be in your own therapy which costs and sometimes even need to pay for your own supervision.

worth it in the end, but not to be undertaken lightly.

if you are just interested in counselling then most adult education colleges do low cost courses in the evenings.

FWIW, i did the basic intro to counselling course with a view to training as a counsellor proper! It was very good, enjoyable, interesting and useful to all human beings
I came away with the tutor telling me I should definitley go ahead as I has all the right skills and temperament to be a 'good counsellor' . However, I knew that I could not do it, the training is too all-life encompassing and I'm sure I would never be able to detatch myself enough from other people's problems. I would not be able to sleep at night

But that course is very good way of testing the waters.

I've just had my Counselling Certificate (half way to the full qualification) Good course, hard work- personally, not so much academically. Not doing Diploma just yet- doing Open Uni degree in Social Policy instead.