How do I start counselling?

What makes us unique as humans is our ability for self-awareness, self-reflection, for introspection; essentially being able to acknowledge and describe our own thoughts and feelings. But with this comes room for that to be problematic. When our thought patterns, emotional states, and behaviours start to become dissatisfactory or problematic, it can leave us wanting to try and sort things out, change things up and try to feel better.

In these situations, we might seek counselling or therapy as a way to try and sort through some of these things. But, for a lot of people the idea of arranging counselling is really frightening; they don't know where to start, what it’s going to be like, what the therapist is going to ask, how long they’ll be in therapy, how much will it cost and how they find a good therapist.

So, over the next few blog posts, I'm going to try and answer some of those questions for you!

So, what is counselling? Well, counselling falls under the umbrella term of talking therapies, and essentially, it's an opportunity to discuss whatever it is that's troubling you; your thoughts, feelings and memories. It's a place to explore those things in more depth, in an attempt to better understand and hopefully get things feeling better for you. The way a therapist will try to do that is by helping you to better understand what's going on, why it's going on and helping you to get to know yourself better; developing a fresher and more in-depth understanding of yourself that then allows you to cope, make changes and choose to do things differently.

How do you get into counselling?

NHS Services

There are a number of different routes into counselling. The first is to see your GP who can refer you into whatever provision your local NHS service has. You may also be able to refer yourself into some NHS services. The NHS also have specialist mental health services; an Adult Mental Health Service, a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), Eating Disorder Service, Maternal Mental Health Team.

Workplace & Education

You may be able to seek counselling through your employer. Some companies offer Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP) which offer a package of treatments including counselling. Similarly, you could also access therapy through your education provision (through your school, college, or university), they often have on-site counsellors.

Charities & Voluntary sector

Charities and voluntary sector services offer counselling at a lower fee, or for free. For example, Cruse offer bereavement counselling and local YMCA’s often offer counselling for young people.

Private Health Insurance

Providers such as BUPA, AXA and WPA will offer a set number of sessions within private health packages.

Private Therapy

And finally, you can seek private counselling. This is where you can source and fund your own therapy. You can find private therapists through counselling search engines, like the Counselling Directory, the BACP and Psychology Today. Visit their website and fill in whatever criteria is appropriate for you, and it will bring up a list of people in your local area. You then look through the profiles, and choose somebody that you like the look of. This process can feel daunting, it’s hard to know what you’re looking for, you may not know what some of the terminology or qualifications mean. So, in the coming weeks, I will be writing blog posts on how to find the right type of therapy and the right therapist for you, and how to get the most from your therapy.