When Becoming a Counsellor Changes Your Relationships

There is something nobody quite prepares you for when you start training to become a counsellor.

You expect the reading.

You expect the assignments.

You expect the occasional existential crisis when you realise you have somehow managed to write 3,000 words about one sentence your tutor said six weeks ago.

You expect to learn about theory, ethics, boundaries, transference, attachment and all those other words that suddenly become part of your everyday vocabulary.

What you might not expect is that your relationships can start to feel different too.

Not necessarily because anyone has changed.

But because you have.

And when you change, even just a little, the way you see the people around you can change with you.

Suddenly, everyone becomes interesting

There can be a strange phase in training where you find yourself quietly observing everyone.

Your partner says something and you think, Hmm… interesting.

Your friend tells you about an argument they've had and you think, I wonder what's happening underneath that?

A family member reacts strongly to something and somewhere in the back of your mind a tiny counselling voice says:

I wonder what that might be about?

And then you remember you're supposed to be having a normal Sunday lunch.

You may even find yourself wondering whether you're allowed to think like a counsellor outside the counselling room.

The answer, of course, is yes.

But it can take some time to work out when to use that awareness and when to leave it in the cupboard.

Because your family and friends didn't sign up to become your case studies.

And you didn't sign up to become everyone's therapist.

When people start seeing you differently

Sometimes the change comes from the other direction.

People may hear you're training as a counsellor and suddenly assume you have developed a magical ability to understand human behaviour.

You may become the person people come to with:

"Can I just ask you something…?"

And you know that sentence is almost never followed by something quick.

Suddenly you're hearing about someone's relationship, childhood, neighbour, boss, ex-partner and possibly their cousin's divorce.

There can be pressure to respond in a particular way.

To know what to say.

To have the answer.

To be the calm one.

But being a counsellor doesn't mean you stop being a friend, partner, sibling, son, daughter, parent or human being.

Sometimes the most appropriate response is still:

"That sounds really difficult."

And not:

"Have you considered exploring your attachment style?"

Probably best to save that one for supervision.

The people you train with can be different

Perhaps the most interesting relationships are the ones you develop with the people you're training alongside.

Because these aren't quite ordinary friendships.

You are learning something together that can be deeply personal.

You may talk about your own experiences.

You may hear other people share things about themselves that you wouldn't normally know.

You may sit together in silence.

You may practise skills on each other.

You may give and receive feedback.

You may laugh together when an exercise goes spectacularly wrong.

You may cry together.

You may watch someone struggle and then grow.

And slowly, perhaps without noticing, you can become quite attached to the people sitting in that training room with you.

They understand what you're going through in a way that people outside the course sometimes simply can't.

They know about the assignment you've been avoiding.

They know about the role play that made you want to hide under the table.

They know the particular terror of being asked a question by the tutor when your brain has temporarily deleted every counselling concept you've ever learned.

There is a shared experience there.

And shared experience can create closeness.

But how much do I share?

And then comes the slightly complicated bit.

How much of yourself do you share?

You might find yourself wondering:

Do I tell them that?

Is this appropriate?

What will they think of me?

Will they see me differently if I share this?

Will this change our relationship?

Am I oversharing?

Am I not sharing enough?

These questions can become particularly loud when you're training in a profession where self awareness is encouraged.

You are being invited to look inward.

To think about your own experiences.

To notice your responses.

To explore your assumptions.

To consider your family history, relationships and patterns.

And sometimes that can feel quite exposing.

There can be a strange tension between being known and protecting yourself.

You don't have to share everything

One of the most important things to remember is that self awareness doesn't require complete self disclosure.

You can be reflective without telling everyone everything.

You can choose what belongs in the training room, what belongs in supervision, what belongs with a trusted friend and what belongs privately to you.

You can say:

"I'm not comfortable talking about that."

You can decide that today isn't the day.

You can change your mind.

You can share something and later realise you would have preferred not to.

You can also decide that something is important enough to share, but only with one person.

Boundaries aren't about being secretive.

They're about having a choice.

And that choice can become increasingly important as your training encourages you to explore parts of yourself that you may not have previously considered.

And then there are the fears

There can be fears attached to all of this.

The fear of being judged.

The fear of being misunderstood.

The fear that people will think you're not "counsellor enough."

The fear that if people know the messy bits of you, they'll wonder how you could possibly sit alongside someone else's messy bits.

You might worry that you should have yourself completely figured out before becoming a therapist.

You might think:

Surely counsellors are supposed to be emotionally sorted?

If that's the case, someone has forgotten to tell the rest of us.

Becoming a counsellor doesn't involve reaching some magical destination where you become endlessly calm, perfectly self aware and mysteriously immune to difficult emotions.

Thankfully.

It involves learning to notice.

To reflect.

To repair.

To take responsibility.

To ask for help.

To recognise when something belongs to you.

And to recognise when it doesn't.

Sometimes relationships become closer

Not all changes are difficult.

Some relationships deepen.

You may find yourself having conversations with friends that feel more honest.

You may become better at listening without immediately trying to fix.

You may become more comfortable with silence.

You may notice when you're reacting rather than responding.

You may become more curious about another person's experience.

And perhaps some people in your life will appreciate those changes.

Your relationships may become more open, more thoughtful and sometimes more vulnerable.

You may also find that some friendships become surprisingly strong because you're learning alongside each other.

There is something special about being able to say:

"I'm really struggling with this."

And having someone respond:

"Me too."

No fixing.

No judgement.

Just recognition.

Sometimes relationships become harder

And then there are the relationships where things feel… different.

You may become more aware of dynamics you hadn't previously noticed.

You may notice when conversations feel one sided.

You may recognise old patterns.

You may become less willing to tolerate certain behaviours.

You may start saying no.

And sometimes people don't particularly enjoy our new boundaries.

That doesn't necessarily mean you've done something wrong.

But it can mean that relationships have to adjust.

And adjustment can be uncomfortable.

Especially when people have known you for years and are accustomed to a particular version of you.

They may wonder:

"What's happened to you?"

And perhaps the honest answer is:

"I'm figuring that out myself."

The relationship with yourself

Perhaps the biggest relationship that changes during counselling training is the one you have with yourself.

And this one can be a bit of a rollercoaster.

There are the highs.

The first time something you've learned suddenly makes sense.

The first time a client says something and you realise you genuinely know how to sit with it.

The first piece of feedback that makes you think:

Maybe I can actually do this.

The moments when you feel connected, present and useful.

The moments when you leave training feeling inspired and think:

This is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

And then there are the lows.

The imposter syndrome.

The assignments.

The self doubt.

The session you replay in your head on the drive home.

The feedback that stings.

The day when everyone else seems to understand something and you're wondering whether you've accidentally wandered into the wrong course.

The days when you feel completely exhausted and question whether you're cut out for this at all.

Both can be true.

You can love the work and find it incredibly hard.

You can feel confident one week and completely lost the next.

You can be proud of yourself and still doubt yourself.

That's not necessarily a sign that you're doing badly.

It may simply be part of learning something that asks quite a lot of you.

You are allowed to be a work in progress

There can be an enormous amount of pressure in counselling training to become more self-aware, more reflective and more emotionally developed.

And those things are valuable.

But perhaps we need to remember that being a counsellor doesn't mean becoming a finished product.

You're still going to get irritated.

You're still going to misunderstand someone.

You're still going to have days where you don't want to talk to anybody.

You're still going to have awkward conversations with your family.

You're still going to make questionable decisions.

You will occasionally have an emotional reaction that surprises you.

You will probably still have moments where you think, I really should know better than this.

Welcome to being human.

The work isn't about becoming perfect.

It's about becoming increasingly able to notice what is happening, reflect on it and make a different choice when one is needed.

So, who are you becoming?

Maybe that's one of the most interesting questions to carry through training.

Not:

"Am I good enough yet?"

But:

"Who am I becoming?"

How are you changing?

What are you noticing?

Which relationships feel different?

What are you choosing to share?

What are you choosing to keep private?

Where are you finding your boundaries?

Where are you becoming more compassionate?

And where are you still learning?

Because training to become a counsellor isn't simply about learning how to sit with another person's story.

It's also about learning how to sit with your own.

The comfortable bits.

The uncomfortable bits.

The confident bits.

The I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing bits.

And perhaps, somewhere amongst all of that, you're slowly getting to know yourself in a slightly different way.

Not as a finished counsellor.

Not as someone who has everything worked out.

But as a human being learning how to be alongside other human beings.

And really, that's probably a pretty good place to start.