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Why pay for counselling?

Writer's picture: Rachel MatthewsRachel Matthews



In this very difficult time, I totally appreciate why paying for counselling could be at the bottom of your list of priorities.

I mean, why would you pay someone to listen to you, when a friend could help you for free?


But counselling is so much more than just listening.


As part of our training, we have to undergo hours of personal therapy, so that we come alongside you, understanding ourselves first.

By knowing who we are, we can help you discover who you are too, putting our own agenda to the side.


We each have a specialism, whether that be a lived experience or additional training that we bring with us into the room. We are continually learning, reading and studying to enhance our work and talking with others in our profession. This offers us a wider perspective to whatever issue you bring.


Although a session is 50 mins, there is so much more work that goes into our time together that is unseen. We will be thinking of you in between sessions and exploring how we can support you better. We have an ethical duty to take our caseload work to 'supervision' each month, to get another perspective on how we can work more effectively.


We pay for room hire, insurance, membership to ethical bodies, ongoing training, and marketing costs to ensure our practice is the best it can be.


You are not paying for our compassion or care -, we give this for free (and is often the very essence of why we became counsellors in the first place) but our time must be compensated in order to make a living from it.


I love my friends, but whenever we talk, I'm also mindful of 'their stuff'.

When you talk to a counsellor, you don't have to worry about sharing the conversation, the conversation will always be centred around YOU. This takes some time to get used to, but it is life giving.


Payment is literally one of the differences, that makes someone a professional in their field. Your neighbour may know how to fix your leaky sink, but a plumber is the professional who may see a wider problem and have ideas of how to fix those too.


Counselling isn't cheap, but it's an investment in you and you are worth every penny.

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