How do you know if you need therapy?

[Jenwales]

My doctors have never sent me but they never offer me any help. Sometimes I'm fine but I get work stress/anxiety and my anxiety is holding me back as I'm too anxious in interviews
I know of a counsellor close to me but I don't know if I need to go or if I should, I guess there's still that stigma around seeing someone like this and I don't know if it will help but I've tried self-help
thanks for any advice

[Carnation]

Believe me, you would know. It's basically when you can't cope with living or a normal daily routine or when the Anxiety spirals out of control. If you can find a good one, I highly recommend it for improvement.

[Jenwales]

I don't think I can afford it, it's £40 for one session and who knows how many sessions I will have to pay for

[Carnation]

Yes, you are right. Have you approached the NHS for this?

[Jenwales]

No I have never had much luck with doctors, they diagnosed me wrong (stress not anxiety) and have never offered me any help. Except when they gave me beta blockers and made me worry more that I had a blood pressure problem. I find it hard to talk about things and easily hide how I feel

[mikewales]

A lot of therapists will do a free 30 min or hour introductory meeting where you can talk things over with them and they can see if they think they can help you and if it is worth seeing them. Ask around a few and find one who does this and go and see them and see how it goes.

I found it very useful, and even though I had to pay for it myself ( was about £40 for an hour, once a week ) amd very glad I did it

[MyNameIsTerry]

Have you checked if your counsellor is professional registered? The BACP Register is the best place to start, many of the professional bodies are connected to training companies to entice people to appear to have credentials but the BACP are independent and recommended as the place to look. There are other recognised professional bodies such as BPS, BABCP, etc but they can be harder to search through and some don't allow searches so you have to contact them but I don't know whether they monitor ongoing supervision which is needed to be a reputable counsellor/therapist.

So, just be careful because if you want to be a therapist in the UK at the moment you can do 100+ hours of training, pay your insurance and open up a practice without ever seeing a client and have no monitoring to ensure standards by an experienced senior.