Retraining - any psychotherapists or counsellors out there!?

[kalecake]

Hi I am thinking of taking the MSc to become a Psychotherapist.

Are there any counsellors or psychotherapists out there? Do you like the job and would you recommend it? Is it rewarding?

I’ve just seen this - I’m a therapist working in private practice. I love the work and can plan my diary around kids and family commitments. It’s worth knowing that depending on where you are there is little in the way of contracted employment so most people I know work privately, which can be unpredictable in terms of regular income. You have costs in terms of regular supervision, CPD and personal therapy as needed to consider too.

A lot of therapists combine counselling/therapy with other roles (eg part time doing X and part time practice) so they have the stability of a fixed income alongside their earnings from practice. In saying that most people I know who want to earn a living as a therapist do manage to do so but networks are important.

It is challenging, emotionally demanding work and you need a good support network, it can also be quite isolating because you can’t chat about your work with friends etc.

Thanks so much for your reply @Jellycatspyjamas .

I may be being naive but I've seen a few nhs jobs going for psychotherapists. I was kind of hoping I could do this part time and a bit of self employed work too. Do you think this would work?
Or are the nhs jobs highly competitive?

It’s worth looking at the nhs, though they can be very specific about the kind of training they’ll accept depending on your area. There are also relatively few jobs so competition can be high and they usually want accredited therapists which means an amount of post qualifying practice, training etc so they’ll not accept folk straight out of uni, if you see what I mean.

Ah ok thank you.
So after doing the MSc do you need to do private or voluntary work before you can work in the nhs? The course I would be doing enables you to be bacp accredited upon completion. I would eventually plan on doing the doctorate but maybe a bit later on.
Sorry for all the questions, there doesn't seem to be any clear cut route for training.

Your course will allow you to be registered with the BACP, you need to be in practice for at least 3 years, have undertaken at least 450 hours of Client Work with at least 150 of those to be post qualification which your MSc won’t give you. There’s then a chunk of written work which is assessed by the BACP.

So yes, you would need to complete the requirements for accreditation after completion of your MSc, which will take at least a year assuming a 2 year Masters course.

It’s one of the real challenges of training that for most employed posts you need to be accredited on top of your qualification. In saying that, it’s possible to do fairly well in private practice and to combine that with other part time Work. Tbh I wouldn’t want to offer therapy on a full time basis - it’s nice to have a balance of other work too.

Thank you very much, that has been so helpful. Looks like it's going to be a long journey but is something I really want to do so I am going to go for it!

Good for you, I absolutely love my work. Feel free to pm me if you need anything else :-)