Counselling for carers

What is counselling?

Counselling can be very useful in helping us to deal with parts of our lives that we find difficult to manage, emotionally or practically. Carers can find counselling especially helpful because it gives them regular times to think purely about their own needs – and in doing so it can make their caring role more manageable.

A counsellor’s main job is to listen to their client and to show them that they understand what they are being told. A surprising amount of the benefit of counselling comes simply from being heard and understood without judgement. A counsellor is someone who is not connected to you personally. This means that you don’t have to be concerned with how they might be affected by what you tell them, unlike when talking to someone you are close to.

A counsellor does not give advice or tell you what you ‘should’ do. Instead, they help you to explore what is happening in your life and what has happened in the past. If you need solutions to difficulties, they will help you to find these for yourself. When facing difficulties, we can easily find ourselves unable to’ see the wood for the trees’. A counsellor will help to point out things that you might not be noticing and will let you know if you are limiting yourself in the way you are thinking. They will point out if you have unreasonably low expectations for yourself and will help you to raise those expectations. Most importantly, a counsellor will validate your feelings.

How do I find a counsellor?

There is nothing in UK law to prevent anyone advertising themself as a counsellor. Counsellors who are members of a professional organisation will be fully qualified and committed to work to a set of appropriate professional standards. Checking that a counsellor is a member of one of these organisations gives you some reassurance about their professionalism. The main organisations in the UK are:

Most counsellors will have their own websites, so you can simply do an internet search to find counsellors in your area. However, there are a number of online directories which can be a good place to start and will make your search a bit easier. The main directories for UK practitioners are:

How do I know that I’ve found the right counsellor?

For your counselling to work as well as possible, it’s important that you have a rapport with your counsellor. That can only develop as you work with them, but you can help that along by choosing a counsellor who feels right for you. It can be a good idea to make a shortlist of people who you think you might like to work with, based on what you can read about them online. Most counsellors will be happy to have a short, introductory chat with you at no cost, so you can get a sense of what it is like to talk to them. Many offer a free or reduced cost first session. It can be a good idea to talk to a few counsellors before deciding on who to start work with, so you can be as confident as possible that you’ve found the right person. No good counsellor will be upset if you decide not to work with them.

What if I want counselling but don’t think I can afford it?

Many people will find the fees for private counselling unaffordable and this can be particularly true for carers. A lot of counsellors offer reduced rates to a limited number of clients, so it you find a counsellor that you would like to work with it is worth asking them if they would be willing to work with you for a fee that you can afford.

It’s worth checking whether your GP surgery offers counselling. Some do, although typically only for a limited course of sessions – usually six or ten.

There are a number of projects in Devon that offer lower cost counselling. If you have counselling with one of these projects you will probably have a counsellor allocated to you, rather than being able to choose the person you would like to work with. If however you find the relationship with that counsellor isn’t working, most projects will be more than to allocate a different counsellor to you.

The counsellors working in lower-cost projects are typically trainee counsellors or are relatively recently qualified. If they are trainees, they will have been tested by their college to make sure that they are ready to practice and they will be given extra supervision to support them.

Below is a list of projects offering affordable counselling in Devon.

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