I did not come to counselling through a textbook. For a long time, I did not really understand what counselling was or who it was for. I assumed it was something other people needed, people in crisis, people whose lives had fallen apart in some visible and dramatic way. That assumption turned out to be wrong, and the thing that changed it was losing a colleague to suicide.
He was someone I managed and someone I considered a friend. When it happened, I was left with something I did not know how to carry. Not just grief, but a particular kind of guilt that comes from being close to someone and not knowing they were struggling. The questions that follow that kind of loss do not go away quickly. They sit with you.
There was nowhere to put it. No obvious place to take it. And I kept coming back to the same question: what if there had been?
What I did not know about counselling
Before I trained, I thought counselling was for people who had reached a breaking point. What I have come to understand is that it is something much more ordinary than that, and much more valuable. It is a space to be honest, with someone who will listen properly and not flinch at what you bring. It is about being heard without the other person needing to fix things, reassure you, or make themselves more comfortable. That kind of listening is rarer than it should be, and it turns out to matter enormously.
What I also did not know was how much of counselling is about what people do not say. The things they carry quietly, the feelings they have never had words for, the parts of themselves they have learned to keep out of sight. Learning to pay attention to those things, to create enough safety that they can be spoken, has become central to how I work.
The decision to train
The decision to train as a counsellor came from a straightforward place. I did not want other people to feel what I felt after losing my colleague: that sense of having nowhere to go with something that was too heavy to carry alone. I kept coming back to the same thought: if he had somewhere to talk, someone who would really listen, things might have been different. I cannot change what happened. But I can be part of something that helps others before they reach that point.
That is still the reason I show up. It has not changed.
What this means now
Training as a counsellor changed how I understand people, and how I understand myself. It changed how seriously I take silence, hesitation, the things that are half-said and then pulled back. It changed my belief in what is possible when someone feels genuinely safe enough to be honest. And it gave me a clearer sense of what I am here to do: to offer people a space where they do not have to perform strength they do not feel, and where what they are actually carrying can be brought into the open and worked with.
A final thought
If you are struggling, you do not have to carry it on your own. Whatever it is, however long you have been holding it, there is somewhere to take it. That is what I am here for.