Starting out in my Private Counselling Practice

In July 2022, I stood on the steps of Iron Mill College, viva done,  with a hard copy of my diploma in my hand – at last a qualified counsellor.  It was the moment I had worked towards since January 2018, when I had started my Certificate in Counselling.   It was the moment I had envisaged as I spent long hours on assignments, worked towards the 150 placement hours, developed deeper knowledge of myself in my private therapy, and had moments of wondering if I could really do “this”.  I had made it to become a trained counsellor – but what next? 

What next, was to take some time to be free of deadlines for assignments, and to consider what jobs in therapy I might pursue.   Looking at what would fit with my work as a nurse and bereavement care trainer, setting up my own private practice was the most obvious choice.  It may have been the most obvious choice, but how did I achieve this? 

Perhaps because I already had a source of income, procrastination set in.  How do I promote myself? Would I work online or in-personn? Who was I as a therapist? What did I offer to a client?  Were all questions that circulated in my mind.  Suddenly being asked to write an assignment seemed an attractive alternative to the challenge of going out into the world as a private counsellor. 

Two years on, I am now working as a counsellor in private practice, both on-line and in person, with my own room, and most importantly, clients.  It has become work I love.  So how did I get here? 

The first step I took was to decide who I wanted to be in my professional life.  Trying to be a nurse, trainer and counsellor was too many identities, and the most obvious combination for me, was to combine the training and the counselling and take a step back from the nursing. 

With the nursing gone, there was now the driver to start to replace income, but having never worked for myself, one of the challenges was the lack of business knowledge.  Through The Heart of The South West Growth Hub, (https://www.heartofswgrowthhub.co.uk/) I accessed some free business set up coaching and a grant which enabled me to get some furnishings for my room,  and a decent laptop.  More importantly, it helped me to start to think about my counselling work as a business, and to write a business plan – nothing that was talked about whilst I was in training. 

Whilst a business plan was helpful, and highlighted the need for promotion and marketing, I still had to do that promotion myself.  Supervision provided a valuable space to consider who I was, what I offered, what I wanted my practice to look like, and from there I found myself able to develop a website and list myself on Psychology Today.  Then the waiting started for an enquiry.   

A year on, that first enquiry seems a long time ago, and I will be forever grateful to the client who arrived and trusted me.  One client doesn’t make a practice, but it set me on the way.  Over the year, client numbers have fluctuated, but just as I wonder if this is the moment no further clients will come, another does, and  I am learning to accept the uncertainty that running my own business presents.  No day or week is the same – and that suits me. 

In a recent article in Therapy Today, Morrison (2024) identified “7 strategies for a successful private practice” and one of those is allowing your practice to evolve.  On reflection, it certainly has evolved, and I am enjoying what it brings – both in terms of the clients I have worked with, and the continuing opportunities to develop both professionally and personally.  He also highlights the value of considering the motivation for working privately and reconciling being a therapist with being a business person.  For me, that combination of providing therapy with business has been a challenge, but with increasing confidence in my value as a therapist,  it is easier to know that I need to be business like to continue, and I am now enjoying the opportunity to develop this business part of myself - something nursing didn’t provide many chances to do! 

There are times when enquiries come to nothing; times when I finish a session with a sense of not having found that “sweet spot” , as my tutor used to say, where client and therapist are working together in a way that allows the client to find what they are looking for - but I would not change the path I have set out on.  As I work with a client and watch them lay out a line of pebbles to represent the boulders that they feel lie ahead,  or listen as another client recognises the crux of what had brought them to counselling, or hear that a client is leaving  relieved to have finally found a way to express the myriad of emotions that have laid unspoken for many years, I know I am in the right place.  It is wonderful work, challenging work, evolving work, but work I am lucky to do, and the solid foundations were laid at Iron Mill. 

Morrison, D.T (2024)  ‘7 strategies for a successful private practice’  Therapy Today , 35(7),  pp. 50-53 

Written for Iron Mill by Sarah, Ex Iron Mill Student and Private Practice Owner

Written September 2024

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