How to pick a counsellor/therapist from the BACP register

[Turtletunes]

I'd like to start therapy as part of helping me escape my marriage and I've looked at the BACP register of counsellors but there are so many on there, how do you choose one? Pick one whose photo looks normal and isn't too far away?! They all seem to have experience of dealing with all issues, according to their own profiles. How qualified are psychotherapists as opposed to psychologists I wonder? I'm just a bit tenuous about confiding in someone who turns out to be another gaslighter/narcissist under the guise of a psychotherapist, I'm not sure I could cope with that. Has everyone who has been to a counsellor found it helpful?

@DeedIDo Well, I've found him, thanks to a spit of lateral thinking. He is on the BACP register but doesn't come up when you search by area as he has no profile on there. Luckily, he has a full profile on another website.

Bear in mind only counsellors who work in private practice will have an advertising profile on the BACP site, if someone only works for an agency or is otherwise employed rather than self-employed they won’t pay the extra to advertise on there. Good idea to ask about the lone worker policy and talk it through though.

She's talking about the BACP register, not the directory.

Anyone registered with the BACP will be on the register.

Only people who pay to be on the advertising directory will be on it.

@DeedIDo good luck following up re: lone working is there definitely no one else in the building? It might be that there is someone in another office you aren't aware of?

@imlevitating yes that’s exactly what I said - the OP noted he was on the register but not the directory and I explained why that would be, in the same way you did.

Only the directory is searchable by area, the register isn’t (it’s only searchable by name).

I would be v wary of the qualifications and expertise of the psychoanalysts on the BACP register.
One such person was an integral part of someone dear to me committing suicide. The person in question was IMO exhibiting paranoid behaviour, but the BACP psychoanalyist agreed with him, even wrote him an assessment letter explaining that his problems were due to X (his delusion) rather than advising him to seek proper mental health treatment or do a safeguarding referral.
This letter posed a real barrier to the person in question accepting proper mental health treatment. And he then killed himself.
The complaint to BACP took 2.5 years, a huge amount of time and The psychoanalyst in question struggled to see what they had done wrong, was under supervision for a bit but now free to practice. No public record of their absolute balls up leaving a family bereft.
The BACP have no teeth. However scathing they were in their final report, the person in question is free to practice. 😔

@imlevitating There was sometimes someone else there at a previous venue, but there is definitely no-one else in the current building. There are three counselling rooms up a staircase behind a row of shops (this is sounding worse by the minute) and the other two rooms are definitely empty. I've just realised that the counsellor locks the downstairs door behind us and pockets the keys. I then have to wait for him to let me out at the end of the session.

Now I've written it down, that does not sound very good at all.

Grateful for explanations upthread about the register and the directory. That makes sense. It also means that I would not have been able to find him at all had I not been able to find out his surname from somewhere else.

I would follow this up with the organisation you need to feel comfortable in a counselling setting and I would feel anything but comfortable in the setting you describe.