Three years training as a counsellor: what I didn't expect

When I decided to train as a counsellor, my reasons were entirely about other people. I had lost a colleague and friend to suicide, and I wanted to become the kind of person who could help someone before they reached that point. That was it. That was the whole plan.

What I didn't expect was what the training would do to me.

Learning about yourself is not optional

Counsellor training is not like most professional qualifications. You don't just learn theory and technique. You are required, consistently and sometimes uncomfortably, to look at yourself. Your own history, your own patterns, the way you relate to people, the things that trigger you, the parts of yourself you'd rather not examine too closely.

This isn't incidental to the training. It is the training. Because if you don't know yourself, if you haven't done your own work, you can't truly be present for someone else. You'll be too busy managing your own reactions to really hear theirs.

I came in thinking I was there to learn about other people. I left each year knowing more about myself than I had the year before. That wasn't comfortable. But it was necessary, and in the end, it was one of the most valuable things I've ever done.

The therapeutic nature of the journey itself

I said earlier that I didn't think counselling was for me. I still haven't sat in the client's chair in the traditional sense. But three years of deep self-reflection, of examining my own responses and assumptions, of being challenged by tutors and peers, that process has been its own form of therapy.

I've understood things about myself that I'd spent years not looking at. I've processed the grief of losing my colleague in ways I couldn't have done alone. And I've come to believe, more firmly than ever, that this kind of honest self-examination is something most of us would benefit from, whether or not we ever call it counselling.

The people

I hadn't anticipated the friendships. When you spend three years in a training environment where honesty and vulnerability are not just encouraged but required, you form a different kind of bond with the people around you. These aren't just colleagues or classmates. They are people who have seen you at your most uncertain, your most challenged, and your most genuine.

I have made friends through this training that I know will be friendships for life. That wasn't something I was looking for when I signed up. It turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of the whole experience.

The reason I keep coming back to

Through all of it, the long evenings, the challenging placements, the self-doubt that comes with any significant undertaking, I've always had the same reason underneath everything.

I don't want people to die by suicide when they didn't have to. I don't want families to go through what my colleague's family went through, or what those of us who knew him went through. And I believe, genuinely, that having someone to talk to, a real, safe, non-judgemental space, can be the difference.

But beyond crisis, there's something else I care about just as much. I want people to find their way to being their true selves. To shed the weight of what they think they're supposed to be, and discover what they actually are. To reach a place of genuine happiness and contentment. Not the performed kind, but the real kind that comes from knowing and accepting who you are.

That's what I'm qualifying to do in June. I genuinely can't wait to get started.