Counselling for Trainee Counsellors

Having your own therapy is a wonderful opportunity to more deeply understand how it is to be a client and to learn how to be a therapist, by seeing and hearing what your own therapist does.

I have worked with trainee counsellors in the South Devon area for many years. Trainees have come to me from Iron Mill, Heartwood and The Dartmoor Centre as they undertake their own counselling/psychotherapy as part of their learning . Usually the training requirement is for 40 hourly sessions of personal counselling or psychotherapy and commonly lasts for approximately a year.

I am a BACP humanistic, integrative Counsellor and an Accredited Core Process Psychotherapist (MA) with membership of two nationally recognised bodies overseeing standards in the field of mental health- the UKCP and BACP. I adhere to their ethical standards and am fully insured. My MA in Psychotherapy is from The Karuna Institute and my Diploma in Counselling from the University of the West of England.  I have undertaken 12 years of professional training in Counselling and Psychotherapy and this is reflected in the quality of care I can offer.

Because I am both a Counsellor (BACP) and Psychotherapist (UKCP) I know what it is like to undertake both forms of trainings.

In my experience with Trainees;

• Counselling can offer you space to explore your experience in group process and your relationships with other trainees and staff.

• It can give you time to digest emotions and feelings that emerge for you as you engage with the training and practice work such as triad roles.

• Counselling can give you the opportunity to explore and integrate how the course impacts on your personal and work life. This may include the practicalities of rearranging work, the financial implications of the training, how it is to find a placement to see clients, issues to do with arranging supervision and of managing academic written work.

• Through the support of your Counsellor, you may wish to reflect on how your childhood and past experiences have shaped who you are, your relationships and behaviours. This can allow new awareness to emerge about your own life, including support for traumatic experiences that you may not have processed.  

• Counselling offers you time each week to explore what’s happening in the rest of your life.

• The support and encouragement of your Counsellor can be particularly helpful as you move towards starting to see clients yourself and becoming a therapist.

PLEASE NOTE: In any one training group, I only work with one trainee. This is to ensure that our therapy relationship and the training relationships are clear from potentially areas of difficulty which can arise when two or more trainees see the same therapist.