mumsnet thread

counsellors who are no good at their jobs Mumsnet

this is an edited version of the Mumsnet thread - to see all the posts look on Mumsnet

Kim666 Sat 30-Sep-17 16:04:59

Over the years I have had a few counsellors. My experience is that it's a bit of a myth that there are these wonderful nonjudgmental people out there who just want to help.
I had one who when I mentioned that I'm unemployed she said "As far as I'm concerned, anyone who really wants a job can get one". First of all that's not true, secondly why would she say that?
I know some people will say that all counsellors will be good at their jobs, but they might just not suit you. Some will say that the problem must be with you.
I've heard things about people's experiences of counsellors that make me think there are people doing that job who shouldn't be doing it. A woman who was grieving the loss of a pet was told that she's just being stupid because it's just an animal. The boy who'd been abused who was told several times that when he grew up he would be an abuser too.
I'd like to know other people's experiences. I suspect that articulate middle-class people are less likely to have a problem.

---
HanarCantWearSweaters Sat 30-Sep-17 17:35:39

The first time I ever spoke out loud about the things that happened in my childhood was to a counsellor at my university's student health centre. She asked me when I was going to stop wallowing.
It took 6 years and getting into a very bleak place before I tried again.

---
Isadora2007 Sat 30-Sep-17 18:23:41

The huge issue is that any twat can call themselves a counsellor. It's not regulated.
Even "NHS counsellors" can be MH nurses rather than counsellors. Or psychologists can counsel but not have counselling qualifications.
It's really awful how much trust is put into people who can take advantage of it.
If you are receiving counselling you have every right to ask about the persons qualifications- a diploma in counselling is the minimum three should have and their course should be BACP accredited even if they themselves aren't (counsellors in an agency often don't waste the money getting personal accreditation)...

---
hippocrit Sat 30-Sep-17 18:39:24

NC for this. I have encountered far too many terrible counsellors sadly.
A little while ago I was legitimately worried about something serious and almost completely beyond my control and and expressed to someone who is a counsellor that I really hoped it would work out. She said to me "well if you want it to be OK then I'm sure it will be". I looked at her thinging WTF? As if wanting is all it takes to get the result we want!
She could have said, "good luck, fingers crossed, hope so" but she did actually, seriously mean what she said and started to back it up with other trite comments.
A previous time she had commented when I had, in private, been a little stressed and upset (about the very serious issue) that I needed to "be careful of the energy I put out there" and not be too negative or it would affect other people. Jeez, talk about victim blaming. I wasn't going around crying or being awful to people - I just expressed in private the depth of my concern and showed some emotion to someone who went out of their way to ask me what was wrong.
She is sadly another one of those peddlars of glib, irrational optimism who have little understanding of real and serious problems or how the real world actually works.
I have seen one counsellor who was good though - but sadly she moved areas.
I think the training is totally inadequate. It is one thing to write essays, but much, much more attention needs to be paid to practical application and manner of speaking to clients.
They should also be regularly tested anonymously I think - like mystery shopping to see how they conduct themsleves once they are left to their own devices (and their old habits and prejudces begin to slip out). As far as I know, there is nothing that assesses their competence and attitude in real life conditions once they have qualified. I think this is very risky for people who can be very vulnerable (who should be referred for proper MH treatment but instead get sent to undereducated counsellors).

---
Eggsellent Sat 30-Sep-17 19:01:56

I'm a counsellor and I agree with a lot of the comments on here but just to respond to hippocrit in order to gain a qualification that enables you to work with clients you have to do 100 hours practice as well as the academic work.
I've seen some awful counsellors myself but I think that as with everything sometimes people just don't click, these ones had great reviews on their websites so some people obviously found them helpful.

---
hippocrit Sat 30-Sep-17 19:12:23

eggsellent is the 100 hours practice all carried out under constant supervision? If not, it should be. And under secret supervision/ spot checks.
It is very under regualted/ accountable for something that can deal with vulnerable people - and cna be used as a 'hoop' that must be jumped thorugh, before gaining access to proper MH care and the counsellors opinion can carry weight with a GP for example.
There has to be something wrong with the training/ qualification system otherwise there wouldn't be so many unsuitable people doing it.

---
hippocrit Sat 30-Sep-17 19:14:49

[Flowers] to everyone who has been hurt by a shitty counsellor. No one needs to be kicked when you are already down [sad]

---
Eggsellent Sat 30-Sep-17 19:51:29

Hippocrit not supervised as in someone physically sitting in the room with you while you counsel but students have to report back to their supervisor (all counsellors have supervision sessions but students have more) iirc it was an hour's supervision for every 4 hours with clients. It's a difficult one because there are probably very few people who would feel comfortable talking about personal matters in front of 2 people and the services that take on students are usually free or low cost so they would then have to pay the supervisor. I think the secret shopper idea is brilliant though. Sorry you had a bad experience.

---
Ohwell14 Sat 30-Sep-17 20:25:46

I had a counsellor as a young teen when I was sexually abused. She was the most unsympathetic cow I have ever met. Had a go at me when as she said "I cried too much". Told me if i didn't go back to school I wouldn't have any friends left and then seemed surprised when i didn't want to talk to her. She finally dropped me after four sessions and I couldn't of been happier. Had to deal with it myself after that but it was better than being made to feel more shit by someone.
But of course in every profession there is always good and bad

---
MsAwesomeDragon Sat 30-Sep-17 20:26:41

The coldest, least emotional person I know is a counsellor. I met her a long time ago, professionally, through my job back then. I was absolutely gobsmacked when she told me she's a counsellor, and I'm thoroughly glad that I've never needed the counselling she specialises in. She didn't seem to have any awareness at all that certain traumatic events in the past could have any influence on a person's behaviour in the present/future.

---
custardcreamplease Sat 30-Sep-17 20:34:17

Yanbu.
There is a very popular counselling course at my local FE college, and through my work I know quite a bit about it/the people on it. Honestly it's put me off ever going for counselling myself. No doubt there are some fantastic ones out there, but I think it does tend to attract some very odd people who shouldn't be in the job. I think you can say the same for teachers, police etc-, there will always be people who join because they like the power trip- but you generally aren't in a room on your own with them, making yourself very vulnerable by opening up

---
MummytoCSJH Sat 30-Sep-17 20:38:59

I am diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and have suffered abuse and loss in the past. A past counsellor (whilst it was considered just depression) told me I should never have children because I'll probably end up abusing them. Happy to report that my 3 year old is doing incredibly, I love him with all of my heart and the counsellor was dismissed after several similar complaints. I have also worked with some fantastic counsellors - so it's definitely not everyone.

---
LRDtheFeministDragon Sat 30-Sep-17 20:40:33

I think it's training and expectations, too.
I was assigned counselling when I was about 19, at university, and unbeknown to me, the idea was that the counsellor stayed silent and just let you talk. I was quite shy and nervous and I had no idea of this, so I had these absolutely awful sessions where I'd try to find more ways to ask 'so what should we be talking about' or 'I'm sure I'm meant to be talking about something here' and he'd reply with the most vague things ever. I actually found it really upsetting! Looking back I think he was such an idiot not to realise I'd never been briefed on the kind of therapy it was and therefore genuinely didn't get it. At the time I thought I was going mad and I'd end up getting all panicky from sitting there for an hour completely unable to get this man to respond to me in any normal human way.
Really horrible.

---
hippocrit Sun 01-Oct-17 12:32:46

eggsellent thanks for the info re the practice hours. That is the situation I expected.
The thing is 100 hours is not much really, only a few weeks or months and it is the training and assessment of how to conduct the sessions that seems to be severely lacking. The standards set are just not high enough for something that can do real damage to people.

---
sparklefarts Sun 01-Oct-17 12:47:17

Been put off for life by the one I saw when I was 17. I was young and had no idea what to say. When I said I wasn't sure what to say, her response was 'well what's the point in being here then'
Never went back.
Many years later and I still think I'd need some prompting to get me to start talking or know where to start so I figure it's just not for me...

---
Toddlerteaplease Sun 01-Oct-17 12:57:47

I got compared to Beverly Allit by a psychiatrist years ago, because I was a self harmer and a children’s nurse. I was so shocked and gobsmacked by that I could t react to it at the time. I wish I’d made a formal complaint at the time. But didn’t think anyone would believe me. An occupational health doctor looked [hmm] when I told him. And asked if that was what she’d actually said. Err yes it was! Turns out that she’d been involved in the Allit inquiry.

---
Jenna43 Sun 01-Oct-17 15:29:27

My old neighbour,who was a highly qualified counsellor, was an absolute nightmare of a woman. Her house was absolutely chaotic, I don't mean just a bit untidy, I mean doors lying across the sitting room floor, boxes everywhere, no room to sit anywhere for all the 'stuff'....she told me in all seriousness that she was opening a clinic and working from home(it never happened) but the fact that she thought this was possible horrified me.
She was a narcissist and her whole family were NC with her. She didn't have custody of her 2 oldest kids, the younger child she had in her care was left to run wild. How she manages to hold down a job never mind counsel people, I'll never know. I was so so happy when she left, 10 minutes in this womans company was exhausting.

---
Kim666 Tue 24-Oct-17 16:14:42

yorkshapudding said When we're distressed it can distort our perception of events and conversations. I think what happens is that people interpret what their counsellor says in the least negative way. They don't want to believe that their counsellor is being judgmental. I know with me I thought to myself "These people are specially selected and trained to be nonjudgmental". The fact is that some people can't resist the temptation to be judgmental, even though the first rule of counselling is not to be.
One of my counsellors really did say to me "As far as I'm concerned, anyone who really wants a job can get one". That's not the worst thing she said.

---
Kim666 Thu 02-Nov-17 14:19:00

You can say that some counsellors and clients don't 'click' but I think counsellors have their favourites, which is not right. If you have an articulate middle-class counsellor who has an articulate middle-class client they may well get on like a house on fire. If the counsellor also has a client who lives in an inner-city bedsit, is socially isolated, has difficulty knowing what to say, has been living off benefits for a long time and worries he may be too obsessed with pornography then the counsellor may get judgmental.
There might not be anyone in that person's life who likes them, then they realize that the counsellor doesn't like them either. That can be very damaging to them, and it may take years before they seek help again, if ever. You might say that the client is misinterpreting what the counsellor has said to them in a negative way.
However, they might not know what to make of the judgmental remarks to begin with. They might think that counsellors are selected and trained to be nonjudgmental. It's only when the judgmental remarks continue and get worse they realize that's not true. The counsellor may decide to stare at the client and not say anything, making the client very uncomfortable.
If they try to tell anyone what has happened they won't be believed. They will be told that no counsellor would say that, they must have distorted what the counsellor said. They will be told there are no bad counsellors, you just didn't click, or you weren't willing to see things from differing perspectives, or you were too emotional to understand what was being said to you.
It would be nice if people unsuitable to be counsellors were weeded out at the training stage. Bad counsellors are not the occasional bad apple though and a bad counsellor is not going to be able to supervise trainee counsellors in such a way that the bad ones get weeded out. A review system wouldn't work because counsellors would get good reviews from their favourites.
I'm not saying that people should not go for counselling, but people should be aware there are some bad ones. If they say something that sounds judgmental or wrong, then ask them to explain what they mean.

---
Viewofhedges Thu 02-Nov-17 22:44:34

I went for counselling at a fertility clinic because I was trying to work out if I could go through ivf and to sort out my conflicting feelings about it. Counsellor told me that I couldn’t possibly be unsure about wanting children and that because I had doubts I “shouldn’t bother.” Apparently ‘everyone else is 100% sure and everyone has children in their lives’ (I do not have a single one). She was so judgemental because I wasn’t foaming at the mouth in my desire to have kids (but this was why I wanted to work through my thoughts!!!!) and I think, looking back, her attitude was very harmful to me.
I also think I annoyed her by likening having a child to going on a one way trip to Guatemala (logic being you don’t know what it’s like til you get there but you can’t come back, I was trying to explain what I saw as the absurdity of the decision) and she looked at me like I’d crawled out from under a stone. I don’t think I fitted her idea of mother material....

---