People considering therapy training often focus on the clinical work—the theory, the modalities, the skills. They think less about what it's actually like to do this job day in, day out.

Working as a counsellor in private practice is deeply meaningful. It is also, at times, genuinely hard. The emotional demands are real. The business side is relentless. The isolation of working alone can catch people off-guard.

This account tries to describe the work as it actually is—not as a recruitment pitch, and not as a deterrent, but as an honest picture of what counsellors navigate.

The Shape of a Working Week

A private practice counsellor's week doesn't look like a 9-to-5. It's structured around clients, but the rest of the week involves work that's less visible.

Client sessions: Most private practitioners aim for 15–25 client sessions per week. Much beyond that becomes unsustainable—the emotional labour accumulates, concentration drops, and the quality of attention that good therapy requires is harder to maintain. Many experienced therapists settle at 16–20 sessions as a sustainable long-term level.

Administration: Each client session generates notes. Correspondence has to be managed—initial enquiries, existing clients' scheduling changes, invoices. Many therapists also manage their own website, social media presence, and directory listings. This is a consistent 4–8 hours per week that doesn't generate income directly.

Supervision: All practising therapists in the UK should be in regular clinical supervision—monthly minimum, fortnightly or weekly being more common for busier practitioners. Supervision involves discussing your caseload with an experienced supervisor: cases that are challenging, ethical dilemmas, countertransference reactions, stuck points. It's a professional requirement and a lifeline.

CPD (Continuing Professional Development): Professional bodies require ongoing CPD hours. This might mean attending workshops, completing online training, reading clinical literature, or attending case study groups. It's an ongoing investment in staying current and developing.

Personal therapy: Many experienced counsellors continue in their own therapy beyond the training requirement. The work stirs things up. Having somewhere to put that material is important—both for the therapist's wellbeing and for the quality of their practice.

Networking and business development: Building referral relationships with GPs, other therapists, HR professionals. Maintaining a directory presence. Writing for a blog. Attending local counselling group meetings.

A realistic working week might look like:

Monday–Friday, 8am–7pm: mix of client sessions and admin
Two Saturday mornings per month: clients who can't attend during the week
One supervision session per fortnight: usually evenings or Saturday mornings
CPD: one full day per month, on average

The Emotional Reality of the Work

This is the part that training prepares you for intellectually and personal therapy prepares you for experientially—but that still surprises many newly qualified counsellors.

You sit with pain all day. Not every client in every session, but across a week, you hold an enormous amount of suffering: grief, trauma, severe depression, suicidal ideation, abuse histories, relationship crises. You are required to be fully present with each of it, then leave it in the room and bring equal presence to the next person.

This is both the work's great meaning and its significant demand.

Countertransference is the professional term for the feelings that the client's material stirs up in you. A client describing a neglectful parent might activate something in your own history. A client who keeps self-sabotaging can produce frustration, compassion fatigue, or anxiety. A client who improves dramatically can produce unexpected feelings of loss. These reactions aren't failures—they're information, and skilled therapists use them. But they require management.

The hour between sessions is where many therapists absorb and decompress. A brief walk, some water, a few minutes to write notes, time to shift gears before the next person arrives. Therapists who pack sessions back-to-back with no breathing space burn out faster.

Secondary traumatic stress (sometimes called vicarious trauma) is a real occupational hazard. Regular exposure to clients' traumatic material can produce symptoms similar to PTSD in the therapist—intrusive thoughts, emotional numbness, hypervigilance. Good supervision, personal therapy, and lifestyle practices (exercise, connection, genuine rest) help manage this.

What nobody tells you is that the work is also often quietly joyful. Witnessing someone who arrived overwhelmed by shame begin to speak about themselves with compassion. Watching a person who'd spent years in destructive relationships make a different choice. The subtle but unmistakable signs that something is shifting.

This is the part that makes it worth it.

Building a Private Practice

Most newly qualified counsellors face the same challenge: having trained to do the clinical work, they now have to figure out how to find clients.

Private practice is self-employment. Nobody sends you clients. You build relationships, create a web presence, list yourself in directories, and wait—and keep waiting—as the practice slowly fills.

Realistic timeline: Most private practitioners take 12–24 months to build a full diary from scratch. Income in year one is typically modest. This is important to plan for.

Directories: BACP's online directory, Counselling Directory, Psychology Today UK, and Therapy Pages are the main channels through which potential clients find therapists. A decent profile photograph and a well-written, warm, honest profile matter more than many newly qualified practitioners expect.

Website: An increasing proportion of clients find their therapist through a website before anything else. A simple, warm site that conveys who you are and how you work—without being a jargon-heavy list of everything you treat—converts more enquiries than a corporate-looking directory.

Specialisation: Generalist counsellors in a competitive market find it harder to stand out. Therapists who develop a genuine specialism—trauma, eating disorders, relationship difficulties, a specific population—tend to build a reputation more quickly.

Word of mouth: Once established, referrals from existing clients and from other professionals (GPs, psychiatrists, other therapists who don't take certain presentations) are the most sustainable source of new clients. These take time to develop but are more reliable than directory listings alone.

The Practical and Financial Side

Private practice counselling is a business. Some therapists embrace this; others find the commercial aspects uncomfortable. Either way, they can't be avoided.

Fees: Setting your fee requires balancing what the market will bear, your overheads, and your values around accessibility. Many practitioners offer a small number of concession slots for people who couldn't otherwise access therapy.

Room rental: Many therapists rent consulting rooms by the hour from a therapy centre or GP practice. In London, this typically costs £12–£25 per hour. Alternatively, a home office (if you have appropriate space and privacy) reduces overhead significantly.

Insurance: Professional indemnity and public liability insurance is essential—not optional. BACP membership typically includes access to affordable policies.

Accounts and tax: Self-employment means quarterly bookkeeping, annual self-assessment tax returns, and understanding what counts as a business expense (room rental, supervision, CPD, therapy insurance, a proportion of home office costs). Most counsellors in private practice work with an accountant.

Cancellations and no-shows: Having a clear cancellation policy (most practitioners require 24–48 hours' notice and charge at least a partial fee for late cancellations) protects income and also, interestingly, the therapeutic frame—which benefits clients as much as therapists.

What Makes This Work Worthwhile

It's worth being explicit about this, because the above might sound gruelling.

Working as a counsellor—really working, doing the thing well—involves sitting with someone and giving them something many of them have never had: complete, genuine attention. Not advice, not judgement, not reassurance. Presence and understanding.

The frequency with which people arrive at therapy having never truly been heard is striking. Not because everyone around them is uncaring, but because most relationships can't provide this—there's always an agenda, always a stake in the outcome, always the other person's needs pulling at the attention.

In a therapy room, for 50 minutes, there is nothing but you.

Therapists who do this work long-term often describe it as a privilege that stays fresh. Every person is different. Every story is particular. The work never becomes routine in the way that many jobs do—because the thing you're attending to is always alive, always moving, always genuinely human.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is private practice counselling financially viable?

Yes, once established. A full private practice of 20+ clients per week at £70–£90 per session generates £70,000–£90,000 gross per year. After room hire, insurance, supervision, CPD, and other expenses, net income is lower—but many established practitioners earn well. The challenge is the 12–24 month build-up period before the diary fills.

Do counsellors need their own therapy?

Ethically, yes—and professionally, BACP and UKCP require it during training. Many counsellors continue in their own therapy beyond qualification, both for professional quality and personal wellbeing. The work has a way of stirring things up.

What's the most challenging aspect of the work?

Most practitioners identify some version of "holding the weight without taking it home." Learning to be fully present with very difficult material during sessions, then genuinely leave it behind between sessions, takes years to develop. Supervision, personal therapy, and lifestyle choices all help.

Is there a typical client?

No. Counsellors working in private practice in London see a wide range: mid-career professionals wrestling with identity, young adults navigating early relationship patterns, people in their 50s and 60s dealing with major transitions, people who've never spoken about childhood experiences to anyone. The diversity is one of the things that keeps the work interesting.

Working as a Counsellor: Life Inside a Private Practice