I’m just squeaking in to maintaining my blogging streak each month by writing to you today on the last day of January 2026, where I am looking back on this first month of the year and how tough it has been (and long it feels!).

Everyone I work with this month has shared a new play on the concept of “500 weeks of January” or it being “January 57th”, and I have laughed each time, because this year it really does resonate. And this sense of a long month has not been helped by the annual dose of illness that my toddler brings home in the colder seasons. In the last month, we have survived a brutal (say no more) bout of gastroenteritis, and I am presently fending off the final stages of the flu. Grateful as ever that I received the vaccine back in November 2025, this flu has been monstrous, and there is no other word for it. I dare not think of what it could have been like if I had not been fortunate enough to preempt it.

Nonetheless, I am wiped - with a busier practice this month and client numbers picking up, I have also enjoyed the concretisation of directions that I hope to take my business in over the next twelve months, including new texts, downloads and an entire website migration. Fortunately, my tech background means that I get to do all of this myself (!!), but it does take me away from writing for a while, which is where my appreciation for sharing my blog with you is renewed afresh, if not each week, certainly each month.

Over to you

So my focus this month is on the topic of illness in private practice. I’m wondering how you - the therapist - handle this? I know that my own approach to taking care of myself has evolved throughout the journey of working in private practice, with necessary modifications and tweaks throughout my experiences of serious illness, becoming a parent, managing childcare and the inevitable waves of viruses and germs.

However, looking after ourselves in private practice can be layered - as anyone who was practising during the COVID 19 pandemic will recall, both our own and our clients' physical safety and wellbeing have to be paramount - we cannot ethically continue to show up to sessions when we are fluey or have an illness that we could pass on to someone else. I am fortunate to work exclusively online, and so this issue impacts me less than others, but it is a serious consideration for those who hire rooms and see clients in person.

Similarly, this is a resource-hungry career - I have found out since the early days of chronic pregnancy insomnia, that performing as a professional counsellor and delivering the quality of therapy and care that I pride myself on is not something that I can do if I am under-resourced in terms of energy, health and sleep. Flu and toddlerhood have been rude awakenings to me as to just how little sleep and energy a person can wake up with in the morning, and it has taken no insignificant effort to set up systems and methods of resting and self-care that allow me to continue to function and work effectively in the event of a disturbed night or feeling unwell.

This is partially what limits me to currently "only" offering three days of client-facing time per week. I would dearly like to do more - as I used to face-to-face from my old office in Bristol - however, I now know that I can reliably commit to a certain number of well-resourced, attentive and attuned sessions per week, and no more. I intend that my clients are only as aware of my life around the edges of sessions as I choose to make them, to remain focused on their process - and this is one of my methods for doing so.

Helping therapists manage practice when sick

It strikes me that this kind of decision-making and setup is really something that arrives in our practice after years of trial and error, of testing availability and timings of sessions, of client subgroups and work types. I take it for granted that I know how to do this now, as I have been through this process over the last decade and a half of private practice - and so I believe it is incumbent upon me to support colleagues and other therapists as they seek to do the same. No doubt there is a book in there (there almost always is, as my hard drive will attest), but I’m considering also offering this as part of my Therapy for Therapists offering.
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I truly see therapists as an underserved community - ironically, but perhaps somewhat predictably - in the landscape of mental health care. Due to stigma, due to economic and time pressures (few people have a “to-spend” list like a therapist with CPD, insurance, membership, subscriptions etc) and I know as well as anyone in this field how hard it can be to prioritise the self when there are so many responsibilities and tasks to take care of in a timely, ethical and professional way.

So I come back to the question for you, therapist - how do you handle your workload, client lists, therapy responsibilities, costs, when you are sick, unwell, tired or otherwise underresourced?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Why do people become therapists?

Many therapists come to this work through their own experience of therapy. They have been so transformed, moved, or altered by the process of their own psychological journey that they have decided to continue practicing the same work, utilising the same learning, and bringing to it a flavor of their own challenges and perhaps even suffering.

What a gift.

Many people who are not therapists, but who work with them, might not - at first -appreciate that there is no such thing as “done” when it comes to therapy. No matter how much we might revere our own educators and role models, we can confidently say that none of them will ever have it all figured out forever, or even be able to say that they will never have poor mental health. That is not how it works. The experience of being a human is not a linear one, and I believe that we are so much better off for that fact - though I know that this can be an unwelcome realisation for some.
We can know all of this intellectually. We can also agree that therapists, trained listeners, counsellors, and psychotherapists are simply humans moving through the world and doing what everyone else does. And simultaneously, we can hold a false expectation that these people don’t ever need support, help, or healing. If they know how to help others, they should just do it for themselves, right?

Therapist, therapise thyself!

But, we can’t.  It doesn’t work like that.

Counsellors need support too

One of the great problems of any profession of service providers, carers or “givers” is that sometimes they need to take, access services, or be, themselves, cared for. Sometimes accessing that care can be difficult. Along with the societal and cultural expectation that these individuals do not need these kinds of help, the individual too can internalise a sense of it being a sign of them not “performing” as a professional, and that they “should” be able to take care of it themselves (I am always wary when the “shoulds” come out in my own thoughts). For these reasons, it can be hard for psychotherapists to find another professional to work with.

Sometimes therapists who don’t want to work with other therapists

It is also unfortunately not uncommon for some therapists and counsellors to shy away from working with other trained listeners. This is an experience that I have had as a client, and that others have reported to me as their therapist. I have even had clients who are professional therapists who have hidden their livelihood from our work until much further into the therapeutic relationship, explaining that they did so due to the difficulty of finding counsellors who take on other therapists as clients. The reason for this is sometimes cited by these people as this treatment of the professional client being more in-depth or complex than they like to go, or more often, I suspect, it is down to the therapist themselves feeling insecure about working with someone else who has more than a passing awareness of the potential psychological theories, counselling models and other suggestions or tools of the trade.

My work with other psychotherapists and counsellors

I am very pleased to say that I welcome this often complex and highly rewarding work in my private practice. My broad experience has given me the confidence and capability to work at a deep level. I have worked with individuals who began in one career and ended their sessions as qualified therapists. I have therapists who have come to me after feeling they could not be honest about themselves with others, and who found great relief at being welcomed into therapy, which in this career is often much needed and dearly overdue. I have worked with people at the end of their careers as therapists and those who work in therapy-adjacent positions, such as social workers, medical and care staff, and mental health practitioners.

This work is deep, layered, and vital, and I love it.

How to access support with me

So if you are one of those people who spend their days supporting others and recognise the need or wish to work on an issue in therapy, or to simply spend some time in a space that is for you rather than your clients, then do get in touch.

My diary is and always will be open to you.

Click here to make a booking for a free 30-minute introduction session.

Click here to read more about my work with other psychotherapists and counsellors.

I had an interesting conversation with someone this week about the support needs of those who work in service to others. For those who are - like me - a counselllor, or like you, perhaps a social worker or a public servant. We noticed that for those of us who are trauma-adjacent and work with those in great distress, the silent toll on the helper can particularly become evident when the helper goes through a life change or difficulty themselves.

My own experiences

When I think of my own experience, two recent sets of circumstances have had a profound impact on how my work goes on to take a toll on me.  The first was having a child, and so the impact of sleep deprivation and the enormous changes in priorities that happen to a person when we begin caring for an infant impacted me greatly.

Another event was developing sepsis as a consequence of a routine surgery. Whilst I have been fortunate to recover from this illness, some effects have not gone away even now, a year later, and my physical recovery has been frustratingly slow.

I silently carry these circumstances in every connection or communication that I make, and as a consequence, also bring them into my therapy. On one hand, I believe that this is no bad thing - I have lived through more life challenges, and this allows me to be an even more understanding and rounded human with broad human experiences. I understand the impact of a dynamic disability now in a way that I could not have before, and similarly, I now understand more deeply the impact of raising a child on individual identity and independence.

But these circumstances have also introduced a vulnerability to my practice that I believe that I have a responsibility to manage - I have to manage the availability of my emotional energy to ensure that I am resourced for my clients, and I also have to manage my physical symptoms as a consequence of my illness, to ensure that these do not distract me from my work. These elements and changes are not my fault, but they are my responsibility, and I carry them gladly.

Community for the caregiver

This brings me back to the role of community for the caregiver - to whom do we go to with our own issues when we notice that there is an accentuation or amplification of difficulty in our own lives, alongside witnessing our clients' struggles and suffering? The knee-jerk reaction here is, of course, clinical supervision, but what about when we need more connection? Few of us have an informal relationship with our supervisors; such is the nature of the professional relationship; however, we might feel more drawn to informal relationships for the processing of our day-to-day struggles as just another human in the world.

The second automatic response might also be to have “good boundaries”, and I agree, but I would also argue that we cannot be a totally robot-like separate self and remove ourselves from the issues of our clients - good boundaries are one thing, but good human-ing seems to me to involve simultaneously being a conscious being, aware of, impacted by and empathetic towards others in the world.

This original conversation was centred on the idea of the value of a supportive community for therapists and counsellors. The argument being that even though we are not sharing details of the work we are doing with friends or peers, we can nonetheless connect with them and find common ground through our shared experience of witnessing the human experience, all the while having our own troubles. We can offer knowing looks and supportive words. We can hold silence for those who need it, and we can understand the other’s drive to give to their clients, even though they might also need someone to give to them.

Personally, I think there is enormous value to this kind of supportive community that goes well beyond the experience of the easier to find peer supervision, but unfortunately, finding informal relationships with others with whom we can feel a shared experience as a psychotherapist or carer can be difficult.

What I’m doing about it

This year, I am going out of my way to try to build this very helpful network. If I see an opportunity to be with those who understand this work, then I try very hard to grasp it with both hands and welcome opportunities to connect. Even when it feels like a lot, or as though things are hard - I recognise the value in this space.

I’m scouring notice boards and email chains for the details of events that I know will bring other like-minded peers. I’m turning up to professional coffee calls to share with others who work in the same way as I do, and I’m being gentle with myself as I remind myself that this is sometimes a challenge, but in the words of Glennon Doyle, “we can do hard things”.

If you are a trusted listener, a carer, or someone in service to others, do you have a community that you can turn to in your more difficult moments as a professional and as a human?

I’d love to hear more about how you manage it in the comments.

In a therapeutic relationship, therapists are - on paper - the ones who talk the least in a counselling conversation. Our role is to be an excellent, invested, actively listening conversation partner. It is our responsibility to notice the vocal inflexion of our client, to hear the unsaid, to absorb the story that we are hearing, and to aid the client in processing and perhaps seeking change.

One of the tools that some therapists will use - particularly with clients with whom the rapport is strong - is self-disclosure, the act of sharing some of their own story, experience, or learning with the client.

A dirty word

I recall when new to the world of therapy, that we trainee-counsellors were warned off even the slightest glimpse of self-disclosure. It was deemed forbidden - a powerful tool only to be used in the most wisened and capable hands. It felt uncomfortable to think that something as easy to do as mentioning a shared experience could derail someone's therapy completely.

Thankfully, now with so much experience and many years of full-time private practice under my belt, I feel as though I have learned how to wield this interjection of self with skill. My lecturers were right. It is a powerful tool, and not to be used in anything but the interest of the client; however, we are talking about a conversation here, yes, a therapeutic one, but also a (hopefully) flowing, authentic, natural exchange of information between people. The choice to self-disclose is not a binary one, and we can absolutely seek the approval of the client in doing so, but over time, I believe that we therapists become more accustomed to understanding what it is about the self that makes therapy work best.

The therapist matters too

I think too many therapists are encouraged to lose themselves in deference to the client in therapy, especially early on. This is not to say that the client is not and should not be the focus of the therapy, but if we diminish ourselves as service providers and trusted confidantes to the point where we are only repeating theory and offering psychoeducation, then I think we run the risk of largely missing the point of therapy.

To remember what we - as a person, not just a membership body subscription number - bring to the session, is vitally important. It is important for the esteem of the therapist, for the humanising of the therapist for the client, and I feel that it is an important element in the service of offering (a professional version) of one’s authentic self in a counselling relationship.

I believe that there is space for everyone in the therapy room

I’m in no way suggesting that we should go into sessions with our clients telling them our worries or deepest-darkest-secrets, but there absolutely is space to be a real person, meeting another real person, and to offer our professional support in humility and honesty. The version of myself that I am proud to bring to my sessions is a whole, flawed, past-having human, and in the right moment, with the right client, and the right set of circumstances I think that self-disclosure is absolutely a valid tool for healing, and one that therapists should be trained to use wisely and appropriately rather than shut down and shooed away from.

If I think about my own experience as a therapy client, the therapists that I have had who shared snippets of useful anecdotes and experiences with me, were infinitely more human and rapport building than those that did not, and I have worked with a range of experience in my own therapist library - from those at the beginning of their careers through to my work as a client of Dr Irvin Yalom (as you will no doubt know from his books, he too believes in a certain amount of self-disclosure). And so I am convinced that we can use both our experience as clients, alongside our experiences as psychotherapists and counsellors, to inform our own ethos in the use of this tool.

With great power comes great responsibility

So, counsellor, I present to you another element to keep in mind when reaching into your toolbox in your efforts to support your clients in their process. A tool not to be feared, but to be seriously considered.

One of my earliest - and hugely positively impactful -therapists used to close her self-disclosures with “...and I’m telling you this because...” which I liked very much at the time. - It’s not a phrase that I have gone on to use myself - I find my own working process to feel more organic, but it is a nice way to reassure a client that the inclusion of some kind of self-disclosure in a session has been, and always should be, in the service of their work.

Perhaps this is something that you might consider bringing to your work with clients? If it is, do let me know in the comments.
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Similarly, if you have had a negative experience around self-disclosure, either as a therapist or as a client, I would be interested to hear your thoughts.