Will counselling help me?

Will counselling help me?

I am the perfect person to answer this question because I have personally been in and out of therapy for the last eight years. I have tried a handful of different counsellors at this point for myself in a couple of different approaches. I have also been counselling professionally for the last three years in my own business. I volunteered in ChildLine, I've worked in schools and with people of all ages and backgrounds, and I studied counselling for four years in total for getting my liscence.

As a professaionl and human being, I'm going to give you my honest thoughts and opinions about if counselling can help you.

Let's get into it and talk about...

• when counselling doesn't really help

• who it doesn't help

• how counselling can help

• who counselling can help

In my work I've found that there are clients who are in a situation whereby the solution to their problem isn't counselling. It might be, for example, that they need more money. They need to be able to put food on the table for themselves and their loved ones, and talking about how they're trapped in a poverty trap isn't helping! Or they have poor housing, with water coming through the ceiling - talking about this desperation may not help - we need to stop rainwater leaking into their kitchen! I've had clients who are disabled and the solution

to their problem is better health.

Even as a professional, who is committed to counselling, I think to myself that no amount

of counselling is going to fix their poor health, the agonies that come along with this reality, or the fact that my clients might live in poverty and it is only money that will really help.

No amount of talking is going to be able to get to the heart of the solution. We can't talk oursleves out the leak in the kitchen ceiling and put food in front of hungry children!

So speaking professionally, I feel that there are many ways that counselling does not provide the solution for people. And I feel like it is arrogance and ignorance to think that my beloved profession, counselling, would be the answer for all people at all times.

It's just not true that counselling is the solution all times.

I don't think that counselling is always effective for everybody at all times, even if counselling could help. I have had clients who have really struggled to talk about what's going on for them because it's just been too painful. Getting into things and get to the roots of things has actually not being helpful because it's meant that they haven't been able to continue working and providing for themselves and their families. Counselling has had to go on pause. I can completely understand this, both professionally for my clients, but also personally.

I remember when I was in my final year of my master's degree, and I found it so, so stressful. I had so much work to do, so many placements to do, so many reports to write, and I considered going into counselling myself, but I knew that talking about my stress wasn't helpful because the actual solution was to get my bum in the library and my head down and get my reports written and get on the bus to my placements and do my hours.

Studying was what was I needed, not counselling!

For myself at the time, counselling might have just felt as though it would have just made things worse for me. When I was at this really stressful period in my life, I didn't have the time, the money or the energy to go through counselling. I needed to put that time and energy and money into studying else.

In this time, counselling was not right support for me. And that's okay.

For whatever reason, counselling is just not right for me or you at times. It's perfectly okay.

Because counselling is designed to be helpful for somebody. If counselling is not helpful, or the time isn't right, then something is is going wrong.

My word of advice would be - Counselling will be helpful when it's the right time and the right type of support. And if the time is not right, that is perfectly okay.

It's important to note that this doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you or with counselling. It just means that it's not the right fit at that moment.

Counselling can be life changing and transformational, when it's done with the right people. With the right approach, counselling can be very, very helpful!

Counselling is helpful when you are open minded to it, ready and able to look at things in depth, to think about it and to feel about it and to have really open, honest conversations and admit things that are really difficult so that acceptance and then change can follow.

It's true that counselling is really, really hard work at times very ugly. You may want

to bolt for the door at times. That doesn't mean that something is wrong or you've done

something wrong, or your counsellor has done something wrong, or that the approach is wrong.

It just is the case that counselling is hard. It's true. And it's okay for things to get difficult.

It doesn't mean that it's that you're not able to work through things. It's perfectly okay because you feeling scared and anxious is your brain's way of trying to protect you.

It doesn't mean that anything wrong or bad is actually happening. It just means that your brain is going through something difficult and trying to protect you.

Counselling can be effective for many people in many different ways. There are over 400 different ways to have counselling, a crazy amount. And in the UK alone, there are over 50,000 counsellors.

It's all about the right time and the right place with the right people.

But - hand on heart - I can say both as a professional counsellor and someone who's been and out of counselling for years myself, that counselling can be really, really helpful.

If you want to talk more about where you're at and how counselling might be able to support you, then I'm here for you. I work online. I'm accessible to people all over the world.

You can send me a direct email at info@loudlamb.com

You can book in directly via my calendly : https://calendly.com/lily-llewellyn/30min

We'll keep in touch.

All the best!

Written by Lily Llewellyn

April 28th 2025