counselling Archives - Lucy Hyde Therapy

Does counselling REALLY change lives?

Lucy Hyde on 23 February 2023

‘Counselling changes lives’ is the strapline of the BACP (British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy ).

I realised recently that it’s 20 years since I had my first experience of counselling, as a client. It prompted me to think about the course that my life has taken since then, and to see that counselling did change my life.

I can’t remember now, exactly what it was that prompted me to seek counselling in 2003. I was miserable, I know that much. Feeling depressed, stressed, trapped, that life was meaningless, not feeling good enough – all these had been familiar states of being for me as long as I could remember, certainly since early teenage. I didn’t think of myself as having a bad life, as these feelings were interspersed with periods of relief, moments of joy, happy events and the comfort of some truly meaningful relationships.

I think I was probably closer to truly believing “I can’t cope” than usual. “I can’t cope” is a phrase that I’ve become accustomed to hearing from other people, yet actually unhappy people are very good at coping. Coping is what we do; we manage, we survive, we keep on going. Often, I believe, when we say “I can’t cope” to another person, something in us is saying “I don’t want ‘coping’ to be my way of life. I want more from life than ‘coping.’”

I remember that I went to my GP. It wasn’t the first time that I had spoken to a doctor about mental distress, although I didn’t have the language to describe it other than to say that I was stressed. Although the word ‘depression’ had resonated with me for many years I thought that people who were depressed didn’t have functioning lives so didn’t think I had the right to the word. On at least one previous doctor’s appointment, I’d been offered medication, but had been reluctant to pursue that route, thinking agreeing would be an admission that I was never going to feel better (rather than seeing it as an opportunity to help me feel better).

I can’t now remember whether I was offered anti-depressants in 2003, but I do remember the GP giving me a leaflet with a list of local counsellors and counselling organisations on it. They couldn’t provide me with this via the NHS, but they could signpost me to where I could access it for myself.

I now see that even that was hugely important – the doctor (I can’t remember who it was, but I can certainly remember those old white male GPs who it sure as shit wouldn’t have been) helping me believe that talking to someone was a valid avenue to pursue, and also that there was something I could do for myself that might help, rather than getting that via the NHS. GPs even now have a powerful role, and that GP – though I had wanted them to tell me what to do – handed some of that power back to me.

Clearly I was in a sufficiently privileged position to be able to pay for counselling, although I’m sure I, like many clients I’ve worked with since, struggled to believe that it was really a justifiable expenditure. I expect I could probably have afforded more than the 4 or 5 sessions I permitted myself, but at the time, my emotional wellbeing didn’t sit in the same position in my priorities that it does now. In fact, the phrase ‘my emotional wellbeing’ wouldn’t even have been in my vocabulary.

There’s lots I can’t remember. I can’t remember the name of the counsellor who I saw, although I’m reminded of them anytime I pass the end of the street that they lived on, where I would visit for sessions on dark winter evenings. I wouldn’t recognise them if I passed them in the street. I don’t remember much of what we talked about.

What I do remember is that, during those few weeks, I noticed an advert in my local paper for care assistants at a local respite centre. The pay was significantly lower than my earnings in my customer service role in a financial company, yet something drew me to it. I didn’t really believe I should apply for a job as a care assistant; I worried I was just trying to run away from work stress in my existing role, but I mentioned it to my counsellor, who responded as if it was a perfectly normal thing to be interested in, and helped me explore the potential rewards and fulfilment in such a position that were missing from my job. I remember her suggesting that caring for others might in itself be something that I would find nourishing.

It was possibly the first time that I’d been encouraged to trust my gut instinct for what felt right, rather than what I imagined was the appropriate or culturally expected way forward (and by culturally I mean my family culture as well as society; I already thought I was a failure for not having a ‘graduate’ job).

I went into the session wondering if my counsellor would know what was wrong with me for being attracted to that job. I came out of the session thinking “I am allowed to want this.”

And I made a change.

I resigned my job in the city and exchanged a long bus commute for a half-hour drive across farmland in the opposite direction, to Leuchie House , a respite centre for people with long-term conditions. I can remember those first shifts, where I didn’t really know what I was doing, but was blown away by all the interesting guests (we never called them patients) I got to meet, and nourished by the gratitude and appreciation they expressed to me for helping them with tasks of daily living that I took for granted.

It changed my life.

I didn’t stay in the role for long. Caring wasn’t for me after all, plus the pay levels at the time were unsustainable for me, on top of running a car to commute 30 miles a day (there being no public transport). I found the process of deciding what to next, 10 months later, stressful, and felt anxious about my future all over again – but I still didn’t regret having made that move. I remained with the organisation, ultimately moving to a managerial role and developing a career in human resources, and stayed there for 13 years, during which the organisation went through some incredibly challenging times, and so did I.

It wasn’t perfect, and at times I struggled with work stress. By the time I left to build a private counselling practice, I felt I had given as much as I could and was ready to go.

But I also thrived in the various roles that I had, and at times felt a sense of purpose that had been missing, being part of a team working towards a single aim, that of providing the best possible nursing care in a holiday home environment. I met and worked with some really inspirational and passionate people. And the experience that I gained, including practising mediation skills, having difficult conversations, supporting colleagues through difficult times, meant, when I was offered the opportunity to do a counselling skills course, I jumped at it, which ultimately led me to being a therapist today.

I’m absolutely not saying that I took one step in a different direction and never looked back. The decision to switch jobs didn’t change me totally. That younger Lucy, who was stressed, depressed, anxious and self-judgmental still resides within me. Although she doesn’t appear anything like as much, or have such an influence on what I think and feel and do, that’s not just about me having had one change of direction. It’s thanks to many years of therapy, lots of hours of psychotherapy training, learning Focusing skills and practising behaviours or skills to shift my mindset, over those 20 years. Plus a bunch of other experiences, influential people and being taught to see that difficult times could also be AFLOGs (Another Fucking Learning Opportunity for Growth).

But, as I look back over 20 years, I can see the thread that links my life now – as a therapist moving into my seventh year of self-employment – to the choice I made as a result of those few counselling sessions in someone’s living room 20 years ago. I can see the thread that links some rewarding adventures, following scary decisions, to the encouragement, from that therapist back then, to trust what feels right, not what I imagine other people think is right.

And I’m very, very grateful to that anonymous counsellor whose name I’ve forgotten, and who doesn’t know the huge difference she made. Counselling changes lives.

If you’ve read this you might be wondering whether you could use some help in making a big decision – or a small one. A decision that might seem relatively small, can have a much bigger impact on your life than you expect.

Or perhaps something is feeling off-kilter in your life and you don’t know what to do about it. Maybe you don’t want ‘coping’ to be your life. Talking to someone can help you to access a deeper understanding in yourself, and discover that there is wisdom there that can show you the way.

You might find it helpful to read about how therapy works – what the process is like and how counselling promotes change.

If any of this resonates with you – please get in touch, even if it’s just for a chat to see if counselling could help change your life.

Therapy journeys

Lucy Hyde on 5 August 2022

Often, some of the most vivid memories of a journey are when we’re not moving. Pausing to catch your breath as you climb a mountain, and taking the opportunity to look all around, to enjoy the view from where you are, right now.

I’m at one of those pauses, I think. I’m at the point of completing my Focusing Practitioner Training almost three years after I started this particular journey, and, as I gradually absorb that reality, it’s prompted me to reflect on the way in which my development (or growth, or expansion – there isn’t really a single word that captures it) as a therapist has happened in a number of phases. Inextricably intertwined with that professional development has been the personal growth that comes with those shifts and changes.

Learning to be human

The first shift was as I did my Counselling Skills Certificate, begun in 2010. For various reasons, that certificate course – often run over 6 or 7 months or less – took almost a year to complete. I learned during that time that I could do this work even if I didn’t feel completely confident in myself and didn’t believe that I was ‘fixed’ – no, more than that, I began to believe that I might actually be good at it even I wasn’t always completely tranquil mentally myself. I also learned that counselling and therapy could be a way to help me understand myself, rather than just a means to emergency-fix something that was broken.

I needed all that time, to discover and internalise that belief. If I had done a 2-day workshop (provided by the organisation I then went on to train with as an alternative to the certificate course), I don’t think I’d have got there. In fact, I’m not sure how I would have reached the point of applying for a diploma course, without the time spent with my Certificate course-mates, the trust built with them and my trainer, the months of counselling alongside, that gave me space to figure out the meaning, for me personally, of what I was reading, learning and practising in those modules.

Learning how to be a therapist

The second phase was as I did my four years of TA training – my Diploma in Counselling with Transactional Analysis, followed by a further year of training (insurance policy for the possibility that I might want to progress to an analyst qualification later on). During the weekend workshops, and through the various essays, transcript analyses and case studies that were required to complete each year, I gained models and tools to help me understand myself – and to help me understand and think about others, including the clients I began to work with through my voluntary placement.

As I learned and became comfortable with particular models or theories (Transactional Analysis loves a diagram!) I began to share them with my clients, too. And those years of training supported my growth in confidence, not least through practice – the repeated sessions with clients that got me used to being a counsellor and believing I was a counsellor. To those placement clients, I was a counsellor from the very first session, which helped me believe it too. Although I learned to think about psychotherapy in the training room, I learned more about actually being a therapist from working with real people.

Learning to be me

Moving on to the third phase: this shift has occurred over the last year or two, as I’ve been completing my Focusing Practitioner Certification training. Focusing is a practice that was developed in the 1960s by Gene Gendlin, to help clients, for whom it didn’t come naturally to pause and check inside themselves for a bodily felt sense of their issues, to learn how to do so – in order to get a more lasting benefit from psychotherapy then doing it all in the head. (You can read more about Focusing, which can be used both in therapy and as a stand-alone exercise or practice, in this blog.

My Focusing experience started while I was in TA training but I’ve increasingly committed to it over the last 4 or 5 years, commencing my practitioner training nearly 3 years ago. This phase has been about me learning to use myself more in my counselling work, becoming more comfortable in my counselling skin. It has been a letting-go of some what I took on during my TA training, including the ideas I’d formed about what is required to be a Good Therapist. The Venn diagram balloons of ‘me as a person’ and ‘me as a therapist’ have a much greater overlap now.

These changes and more, came about through my own personal practice of Focusing, my own therapy with a Focusing-oriented counsellor, and the gradual introduction of Focusing into my own practice with clients. That all needed time.

A slower pace

I don’t believe any of these phases could have happened any more quickly. Focusing Practitioner training typically takes one and a half to two years; I took three. I could have embarked on it as soon as I finished my core psychotherapy training, but I’m not sure I’d have got to this place, where I am now, any sooner. Each development hasn’t simply been about workshops, training, reading, CPD hours; it’s required me to gradually incorporate what I learn into me, an evolution that’s taken place through my whole mind-and-body self.

Recognising that, in itself, is a significant sign of a change in me. Most of my life, I’ve been driven by the belief that I need to get on with things quickly, that achievements are better the faster they happen. The realisation that this pace, including the times when I’ve

paused for breath

paused to notice my surroundings

paused to re-calibrate in the middle of something

….that this pace has been right, exactly right, for me, is powerful. I’ve meandered off down cul-de-sacs, I’ve taken radical changes of direction, and they’ve contributed too.

Journeying with clients

All this has prompted me to notice that the same is true for the journey of any client who comes looking for therapy – and how important it is to have those pauses in the journey. The pauses give you a chance to notice how far you’ve come, to notice what’s changed, they help you realise the things that you now know about yourself that you didn’t – that you can’t now un-know. Equally important, the pauses give you a chance to consider what direction you want to head in, from where you are now.

Just because you had a particular goal in mind when you first looked for a counsellor, it doesn’t mean that that same goal applies now, where you are, in your current place.

Sometimes a client will ask me the ‘right’ way to approach a problem, or they’ll ask what I normally tell people in their situation. I often say, I don’t have an answer to give, because everyone is on their own journey, and sometimes all you can do is pause for a breather and check – Where am I? Where have I come from? What direction do I want to go next?

And the journey doesn’t take place in isolation – we’re affected and changed by what we see and experience. The first stage of my counselling training journey was in the aftermath of my mum’s death from cancer, and in the midst of the threat of redundancy and subsequent driven hard work and determination, with my colleagues, as we fought to make our section of a big national charity, Leuchie House, succeed as an independent organisation.

My dad died during the second phase, and I also discovered a new love – coastal rowing – that changed my sense of who I was (no longer the girly swot who never got picked for teams). The third stage began alongside the terrifying and exciting experience of living abroad, out of work, with limited language skills. Crucially, the clients, colleagues, the people I’ve worked with through all these stages, have played a part too. These experiences, and more, were woven through the journey, woven into me.

The way forward

I have some vague ideas of where I might want to go next – for example, thoughts about the work I do outdoors with clients and how we might allow the environment to take more of a role in that. These are hill-tops glimpsed between veils of cloud. For the moment, pausing where I am, reflecting on the last miles and not pushing on too quickly, is just the right place to be.

Perhaps YOU could pause and reflect on your own journey. You might be surprised what you notice.

Therapist heal thyself

Lucy Hyde on 1 February 2019

This week I’ve been fighting a bug. (You don’t need to feel sorry for me, I’m doing a great job at that.) As I decided each day whether to go ahead with client appointments I’ve been reflecting on what was The Best Thing To Do – for me and for my clients. Never an easy one to figure out, this is even less clearcut with online work when the factor of “Is it in the best interest of my clients to be infected with my snotty bug?” is removed. And I don’t have the additional effort of hauling myself through the cold to a rented room in the city.

I’ve been remembering an article I read when I first started working with clients which spoke of the ethical requirements of self-care. That as therapists we have a professional obligation to look after ourselves so that we are in the best possible position to look after others. At the time I read it this was gold for me; if I had a duty to look after myself it meant that I would do it, as I could circumnavigate the internal messages that told me I was being self-indulgent.

Doing self-care ‘right’

The downside of my interpretation of this requirement is that my tendency to ‘do things right’ then kicks in, in the area of self-care, too; I find myself asking myself if I’m short-changing clients by working when I’m not 100% in peak physical and mental condition (i.e. coming down with a cold). That battles against the belief that my clients need me, that I’m letting them down by cancelling. (As counsellors we sometimes forget that our clients continue to live and function OK the other 167 hours of the week that we’re not with them.)

I’m sure my perspective is skewed by being inside the therapy world, but sometimes it feels to me that counsellors are particularly demanding of themselves and each other in the need to do things right. Counselling attracts people who care, who want to do well for others, who want to ‘make people happy’. But sometimes we can be blinded to the value of making mistakes, of having to make a judgment call in a fuzzy situation. Black and white decision making is so much easier!

Is it OK for counsellors to have needs, too?

Self-care isn’t all chocolate cake and scented candles, as has been pointed out before. In this context – of whether or not to cancel appointments – it’s not just a question of feeling sorry for myself and curling up under a blanket. Even where I may have felt anxious in anticipation, often I feel energised after an appointment – something about being so focused on that person, about being allowed a little way into their world, about our relationship, about the magic that happens in therapy. Is depriving myself of that feeling self-care? The total focus that I bring to a counselling session means that sometimes I feel as I’m ‘coming back into the world’ afterwards. It’s therefore an opportunity for me to be centred on something other than feeling under-the-weather – surely a form of self-care?

And as therapists we often feel uncomfortable talking about the reality that our work is also our livelihood – we don’t like the idea that we’re charging people a fee for ‘being nice to them’. (Reframe: therapists are people you pay to teach you how to care for yourself.) We need to make a living, and I would be dishonest pretending that potential loss of earnings isn’t a factor – financial survival is self-care too. There’s a practical business aspect to this though: we need to be ‘good-enough’ therapists otherwise our clients won’t come back. If we’re putting ourselves under pressure or making a habit of working when we’re not up to it, that won’t help the bottom line.

Giving it our best guess

All of the above comes with the caveat that we need to not push ourselves to extremes – either of overwork or of self-care! As an example; today I felt I was functioning at 85%; I went ahead with the appointment; I did feel I had more energy afterwards but I knew also that I had recovery time, a buffer of a few hours before the next client.

I have worked in jobs where I would go in when I was feeling rubbish – ‘presenteeism’ we called it in the HR world – because there was stuff that I could do that took less of my energy, and because I believed I had to ‘look keen’. I’ve also worked in jobs where I really needed to be 100% fit to cope with the demand of the role. Being self-employed, the only person I’m fooling is myself, and I just need to make a judgment and make the best of the situation.

As a therapist part of my work is modelling behaviour to the clients I work with. What am I modelling if I feel like shit and go to work anyway for the sake of my client? That the other person is always more important than the self, that I have to rescue them?

Sometimes there’s no formula

Instead I need to check each day as it comes with the information that I have; am I fit enough to work? And check at the end of the day; was I a good-enough counsellor? If some days I decide I would have been better taking the day off, that’s information for the future. And that way I’m modelling what it is to be human, that there are very few black and white decisions and that being human is good enough.

***As a footnote: the week after I wrote this, the bug really kicked in, totally flooring me. At one point I started to wonder if I would ever be well again. This was a good reality-check to my musings; there was no way I could have worked in that state – I could barely even think, let alone ‘focus on my client’. It was a reminder that sometimes there are black and white decisions!

References:

‘therapists are people you pay……’

What self care really means