As part of our Faces Behind HCC series, a member of our teaching team reflects on their route into counselling, their experience of training, and what it means to support others in their development. Drawing on both clinical and teaching experience, they share insights into learning, growth, and the challenges of the work.
Tell us about your background and how you came to train as a counsellor?
I studied psychology at university, hoping that I would gain some kind of insight into the human mind. There was a lot about observable human behaviour, how the brain works, and even explorations of what I found to be quite bizarre topics, like parapsychology. Comparatively, there was very little on therapy or how the mind works (as opposed to the brain). I remember one lecture in particular, which might as well have been titled “Why Freud was Wrong About Everything, and Nobody Should Take Him Seriously”. I did not know anything really about Freud at the time, but I found the lecture to be incredibly unconvincing, and it in fact drove me to find out more about the subject.
I went on to do an MSc in Psychoanalytic Studies at UCL, where I had contact with significant figures in the field such as Mary Target and Peter Fonagy. It was a lot of work, very confusing a lot of the time, but I somehow got through it. Being around a lot of psychoanalysts and fellow students who had experienced a significant amount of therapy themselves made me consider that perhaps I might like to start therapy myself, and I did so a few months after finishing the course.
During my therapy, I would speak a lot about what I wanted to do with my career, which, until this point (and for many years after), was in financial services. My therapist would often reflect back something along the lines of “Well… you did a psychology degree, you did a masters in psychoanalytic studies, you are now in psychoanalytic psychotherapy several times per week… does it not seem that you are moving in a particular direction?” After my therapist moved away, I began an analysis for what turned out to be over seven years.
During that time, I met my now-wife and began volunteering at the Maytree Respite Centre in Finsbury Park—befriending people experiencing suicidal ideation, on the phone and in person. It was there that I finally realised that this was what I wanted to do—sit alongside people, hear their difficulties and help them understand something about what was going on. I researched training courses, and HCC seemed the best fit. The training had its challenges, but I felt ready for it in terms of the volunteering experience I already had by that point and the amount of therapy I continued to receive throughout.
In 2020, I went into private practice, initially online only due to Covid restrictions. We had our first child in 2021, and a couple of years later, I went into private practice full-time, finally transitioning away from finance permanently. I have been on the Initial Consultations Team at HCC previously, and now teach on the Certificate in Counselling Skills course.
I have also just begun a Psychotherapy training course, as for the first time in a while, I felt like I might have space in my brain and life for further development.
What in your opinion, is the role of a tutor in an organisation like HCC?
On the Certificate Course, I think our role is to work out how best to encourage and develop the group’s thinking, as a whole but also on an individual level. This goes for the theoretical aspects, but I feel the personal development always goes alongside and is where the real learning takes place.
What do you enjoy most about the role?
Working with colleagues, we can challenge each other’s thinking as well as the students’, and it is always a privilege to see how each individual develops.
People progress at different rates, and in different ways, and each year someone will surprise us—in a good way.
Also, explaining concepts to students and the discussions that follow always help to crystallise one’s own thinking.
What do you enjoy least?
Honestly, what came to mind as the worst experience as a tutor was an exceptionally hot day at the end of the final term last year. A lack of effective climate control meant we were all suffering!
On a more general note, perhaps report writing is not my most beloved of processes.
What are the main skills you need as a tutor on a counselling course?
I think there is some overlap with the skills needed to be a counsellor—curiosity towards the students, and an ability to stay alongside them whilst they learn and develop at different rates and as they are at different points on their journeys.
In addition, I think some basic admin ability and a willingness to collaborate with your colleagues.
A theoretical text that you cherish and go back to over and over again?
Perhaps it is preaching to the choir, and I am not sure it counts as a theoretical text, but on the diploma, one of the papers which always stayed with me was The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy by Jonathan Shedler (2010). It is such a forthright advocacy of our way of working, which I think is unfortunately quite rare, and I find it inspiring.
It feels like we live in a culture which is forever pushing for quicker and quicker fixes, and it is good to have evidence to hand that ‘more efficient’ is actually not more efficient at all, and certainly not more effective, scientifically speaking.
I find it a shame that so much of the wider profession seems to be taken up with reheating old concepts and applying initialisms to sell them as ‘new’, rather than being keen to understand psychoanalytic concepts which have stood the test of time but require slow, methodical, often difficult work. This is a way of working which can bring about true psychological change rather than simply a temporary reduction in symptoms.
How do you rest and practice self-care?
Um… this is perhaps not my strongest point. Having two small children makes it a challenge, but I do manage to go for a swim sometimes and enjoy a stroll around London between sessions on occasion.
First published in our internal newsletter, October 2025
