Diversifying with a Psychotherapy Degree

The_Scary_Man

Hi,

I completed a psychotherapy degree last year and I've just started to build up my hours toward accreditation. I've been thinking about what I would need to do to be able to earn a living as a counsellor/psychotherapist. I realise that it's going to be difficult to do this solely through private practise so I'm wondering what people on here have done to broaden out their work.

I started a HDip in Coaching Psychology because I thought it would help me to transfer my skills and knowledge into the business arena and perhaps allow me to begin to do corporate work i.e. interpersonal communication training, change management, team coaching etc. and also EAP work.

I'd like to work in a number of areas and Sport counselling is one area that I thought of. I was considering going on to do a MA is sports psychology but it might make for a pretty eclectic set of qualifications. I might be better off to do a Masters in Integrative Psychotherapy but I'm not sure if it will be worth the investment of time and money.

Ken.

Odysseus

If you want to carry on working as a psychotherapist, I would suggest you do some post-grad study on the topic. This will improve you chances of getting more stable work in the psychotherapy area.

I had hoped to get back studying this year, but I was ill for a while and had to defer. I have a long list of areas I would like to study like yourself, and these will always be there for you later on. Getting a Master's in psychotherapy should stand to you around getting further psychotherapy work, either privately or for an organisation. This will facilitate you in training in the other areas you are interested in.

Anyway that is the way I would look at it, get as qualified as possible in one area; then as you gain more work/experience in that area you can use it to facilitate further training in other areas. Private practice is very a difficult area to establish yourself in. I know a lot of therapist's who are very well qualified but they cannot get enough work to give up their full time employment.

Currently I don't do any private work; I have in the past and plan to start again later this year. However, I do lecture for some courses, and this can be a way of earning extra cash, and doing a MA in psychotherapy alongside your BA may facilitate you in getting some work in an educational setting. However, getting started in lecturing can be as difficult as establishing yourself in private practice. Anyway I hope some of the above answers your question in some way.

krankykitty

Good question OP, and one I'm currently pondering myself. Are you still doing the coaching psychology, how's that going?

Odysseus makes good points about getting to a high level of qualification with the one modality, however I was wondering what applications people might think of for someone with for a psychotherapy degree, apart of course from the psychotherapy arena itself?

JuliusCaesar

The_Scary_Man wrote: »

I'm not sure if it will be worth the investment of time and money.

Not one of us can foretell the future.

The_Scary_Man

Thanks for the feedback and insight guys and you're right Julius, none of us can foretell the future. I was just thinking 'out loud' and trying to process the decision for myself. I'm still trying to figure out where I want to go career wise.

The coaching psychology course is going very well krankykitty thanks. I think that it will open up some new opportunities for me. I've been talking to a couple of personal trainers and a few people in sports clubs about working with them when I finish on a pro bono basis until I build up some experience. It'll be a fair slog building up a client base I'd say.

This opens up, for me, the whole question of marketing and advertising for therapists. I imagine it would be very difficult to build a practice based purely on networking and word of mouth and yet I sense that advertising is looked on with a touch of disdain in some quarters.

Having said that I know a lot more counsellors and therapists are successfully engaging with the public through websites and blogs.

The challenge as I see it is to engage with the public in a way that gets across a picture of the professional service that the counsellor provides while staying away from self promotion or self aggrandisement.