Dr Tony Weston is a BACP Senior Accredited Practitioner (Column C). You can follow him on YouTube

Personal therapy for therapists, supervisors and trainees

Most training courses require you to have personal therapy. Most accrediting bodies expect it.

The evidence that it makes you a better therapist is surprisingly thin. Beutler and colleagues reviewed it in 2004 and found the link to effectiveness limited at best.

I say that first because you are going to spend a lot of money on this, and because you will spot it yourself if I do not.

What the evidence does support

There is better evidence about what an excellent therapist is actually made of. Following work begun by Fiedler in 1950, Van Wagoner and colleagues identified five qualities, and Gelso and colleagues later found some evidence that they do lead to better client outcomes:

  • Self insight. Understanding your own feelings, your personality, your history
  • Self integration. Having addressed enough of your own material that you stay yourself in the room
  • Anxiety management. Letting a client feel and express something difficult without being overwhelmed by it
  • Empathy. Going a long way in without losing your footing
  • Conceptualising ability. Seeing how what is happening relates to how you understand people

None of those is a technique. All of them are capacities, and capacities are built rather than learned.

That is what I think personal therapy is genuinely for, and it is different from being required to have it.

Why work with me

Three things, and they are unusual together.

I am a BACP Senior Accredited counsellor, psychotherapist and supervisor, and a trainer. So I know what your course wants, what accreditation wants, and what supervision is and is not going to cover.

My doctoral research looked at 321 clients of 27 therapists and asked what predicted good outcome. The answer was the quality of the relationship. It won BACP’s 2011 prize for Outstanding Research Project, and it included outcomes from my work with practising therapists and trainees. So the evidence I am describing includes evidence about this work in particular.

I am primarily person-centred, and I have also studied and draw on cognitive-behavioural and psychodynamic approaches. Congruent empathy and unconditional positive regard are foundational in all three traditions, which is why this way of working suits therapists from any school rather than only my own.

What it is like

It is your therapy, and it is client-led. You bring what you bring.

The five qualities above are not a curriculum and I will not be marking you against them. They are simply a decent description of what tends to be underneath the difficulty when a therapist gets stuck, and it is often useful to have that named.

Some of what comes up will be about the work: a client you dread, a pattern you keep repeating, the thing you have never said in supervision. Some of it will have nothing to do with the work at all. Both belong here.

Trainees

I have worked with trainees from courses in Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds, Norwich, London and the surrounding area, and I am used to what different courses require in writing.

If the fee is difficult, say so when you get in touch. A limited number of places are available on a sliding scale, and I can also recommend therapists I supervise who work at lower fees.

Practicalities

£155 per one-hour session. Online worldwide, or in person at Horseheath, near Cambridge. Monday to Friday, and Saturday mornings, UK time.

The first session is paid, and part of what it is for is deciding whether I am the right person. I can usually offer a first meeting within a week.

Schedule an appointment for counselling for counsellors/ therapy for therapists: https://calendly.com/drtonyweston/reg-session

Schedule an appointment for supervision of supervision: https://calendly.com/drtonyweston/clinical-supervision

Resources available at PsycheVita and on the App, start at: https://psychevita.com/

References

Beutler, L E et al (2004). Therapist variables. In M J Lambert, Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behaviour Change, 5th edn. Wiley.

Fiedler, F E (1950). A comparison of therapeutic relationships in psychoanalytic, nondirective and Adlerian therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 14 (6) 436-445.

Van Wagoner, S L, Gelso, C J, Hayes, J A and Diemer, R (1991). Countertransference and the reputedly excellent psychotherapist. Psychotherapy 28 411-421.

Gelso, C J, Latts, M, Gomez, M and Fassinger, R E (2002). Countertransference management and therapy outcome. Journal of Clinical Psychology 58 861-867.