Private counseling practice set up

Corolla76

Hi
I have a friend who is a great listener and really interesting person to chat to,
and is considering doing some online counseling courses online with a UK college,with the view to setting up a private practice.She would be recognised here but then there is no regulation here.She may be very successful as she would be a natural for the job.
Any advice please.
Thanking all

Odysseus

Corolla76 wrote: »

Hi
I have a friend who is a great listener and really interesting person to chat to,
and is considering doing some online counseling courses online with a UK college,with the view to setting up a private practice.She would be recognised here but then there is no regulation here.She may be very successful as she would be a natural for the job.
Any advice please.
Thanking all

Regulation is on the way. To be honest, I'm not having a go at yourself; but the perception that being a good listener and doing a few basic courses really p!sses me off.

Being a therapist means holding a clinical position, holding a clinical position means being clinically qualified. Online courses are a joke really, a person needs to have supervised clinical work as part of their training, and you can't get that online.

There are different types of listening, in my case as a psychoanalyst it meaning listening for the unconscious within a person's speech. Whereas I don't know what your perception of therapy is, being a therapist is not about just listening [and in some cases providing support and guidance], it involves knowing a lot about the human condition and the various disorders that people experience, as well as being able to facilitate a space where people can speak about [in some cases] the trauma's they have experienced.

Childhood sexual abuses as well as ongoing domestic/sexual violence are themes that I deal with in a significant amount of cases. Being a good listener here can be important, but it is much more than that; here you are enabling a person to speak about stuff that they may never have spoken about before and may never speak to anyone person about it again. The clinical skills of being able to facilitate such a discussion without it becoming too much for the person are fundamental here. Plenty of people have been damaged by others who think they can deal with such topics, but cause more harm than good.

Clinical judgment can only be learned acquired through a strong training that includes personal therapy, clinical supervision and years of training by more experienced clinicians.

You right in that currently your friend could just advertise her services, but private practice is very hard to get into. It can take years to build up. I work mostly for the HSE so most of my clients are supplied to me, but I know plenty of well qualified and very good therapists who only see people part-time as they cannot get enough clients to leave their day jobs, or the teach in the area too. Actually private practice is very cut throat when it come to referrals and the like.

Personally, I won't refer a client to another therapist unless they are at least Masters level trained in psychotherapy. My suggestion to your friend is if this is something she went to do, is get the proper training; messing about with someone's mind can have serious consequences if an untrained person does it.

In order to work in this area you should have been trained in areas ranging from addiction to suicide as well as the more traumatic areas I mentioned above. I know this is not the type of response you where hoping for, but look at it from our side of things. Whilst I'm still involved in my own training 13 years after I started, my initial training included my degree, my masters, supervised clinical practice, I would still be in supervision to this day, as well as five years of personal analysis.

No online course can provide that, there are plenty of very useful threads here about educational/training, get your friend to have a look at them. People here are generally very helpful in giving information about the various training/educational courses that are around and will get your friend trained up to a standard where they would be able to work safely with people. As I said I don't won't to appear that I am having a go at you personally, I'm not; but if your friend wants to work therapeutically she needs to undergo a proper training.

parazard

As a fellow professional who has undergone years of training, clinical supervision and personal therapy I concur. Only too often have I heard of horror stories of people who went to see 'counsellors' or 'therapists' with questionable qualifications.
This not only can directly harm individulas but it can also have a very negative impact by putting people off from seeking any help for their difficultues in the future.