This Business of Therapy

Month: January 2014

  • Counselling and Therapy: Vocation or Profession?

    During a recent conversation with a colleague, I was talking about the 2013 IACP survey of members which said that the average billable hour is charged at €44, and that one in three charges €30 or less per hour. A more recent Uncommon Practitioners survey suggested an average of €60 an hour for Irish respondents. In both…

  • Setting up In Practice: 8 Important Steps to Looking After Yourself in the Work

    There is a serious danger in this work that the practitioner’s needs become eclipsed by the needs of her clients.  This is particularly so in the early years, when a therapist may not have enough clients and takes on everything that comes their way for fear that there will never be any more.It can also…

  • Starting Up A Therapy or Counselling Practice– Getting Those First Clients

    Having decided where you’re going to practice and put the framework in place, you’ll want to get some clients to work with. This is where having an idea of what you’d like your practice to look like really helps. There’s a saying that if you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no-one. For example, if…

  • Setting Up A Therapy or Counselling Practice – Housekeeping Tasks

    So following on from my last post do you now have some idea of the type of practice you’d like to have? (missed it? Read it here) So, what’s next? In order to set up a self-employed therapy or counselling practice, and before you take on your first client, there are a number of “housekeeping”…

  • So You’re Starting a Therapy or Counselling Practice?

    Good for you! It’s a big step towards what will hopefully be a rewarding and satisfying career for you. In setting up a practice, you will be making available to the public the specialist knowledge and skill that you have developed over the years of your training. As you continue to practice, you will be…

  • Standing Up For Ourselves

    Two years on from the publication of the IACP’s 2013 report following their members’ survey, and I’m still intrigued by the findings. For me the most striking comment is: The major issue in the profession is the depressive effect of the recession, in terms of impact on clients and their perceived inability to fund treatment.…

  • Allowing In What We Want

    As we turn into the second quarter of the year, and the evenings are getting a bit longer, New Year’s seems a long time in the past, and with it, any resolutions I might have made that 2016 would be different from 2015. Do you hate New Year’s Resolutions, setting intentions, making goals or anything…

  • Changing it Up

    I’ve spoken before about getting focussed, whether it be on what you want, on a niche or target market, or on the way you see yourself in your practice. Today, I want to talk about changing things a little. Why on earth would you want to do that? I come from a big family, and…

  • Living (and working?) Intentionally

    Some time ago, I attended the funeral of a former work colleague. Throughout the ceremony and afterward, talking to others, one message was repeated, by just about everyone, that her death was premature and unfair. She was forty, and left behind a husband, two children, sisters, work colleagues and friends, by whom she will be…

  • The Importance of Intention

    “Nature abhors a vacuum” I was taught in one of my first science classes. Whether you’re talking about air rushing in to fill the empty space, or how other people’s goals and intentions can fill up the space in our lives, it’s true. Nothing gets done without there first being an intention. My big indulgence…