Therapy for therapists: why your own therapy matters

Most training routes for therapists and counsellors require a certain number of hours of personal therapy. For many trainees, this can feel like a box to tick, an hour a week to fit around placements and coursework. But personal therapy, done properly, is one of the most valuable parts of becoming a therapist, and its importance doesn’t end once training is complete.

Why personal therapy is part of training

It might seem obvious why trainee therapists are required to have their own therapy: to understand, from the inside, what it feels like to be a client. This is true, and valuable in itself. Sitting in the client’s chair, even briefly, gives you a felt sense of things that no amount of reading or lecture can convey: the vulnerability of arriving for a first session, the strangeness of the therapeutic frame, what it’s like when a session ends mid-thought.

But there is a deeper reason too. The work of therapy involves using yourself, your reactions, your capacity to stay present with difficult material, your ability to notice what’s happening between you and another person, as part of the clinical tool. If you don’t know your own patterns, blind spots, and vulnerabilities, they will inevitably show up in the room with clients, often without you realising it.

What personal therapy actually does

Personal therapy gives you a space to work through your own material: the experiences, relationships, and patterns that have shaped who you are. This isn’t separate from clinical training, it is a core part of it.

Through this work, trainees often discover things about themselves that directly inform how they understand and work with clients. A trainee who has worked through their own difficulties with anger, for example, may be far more able to sit with a client’s anger without becoming defensive or shutting it down. Someone who has explored their own experiences of loss may bring a different quality of presence to a client who is grieving.

You cannot take a client further than you have been willing to go yourself. Personal therapy is, in part, about expanding your own capacity to tolerate and understand difficult experience, so that you can accompany others into theirs.

Countertransference and self-knowledge

One of the central concepts in psychodynamic work is countertransference: the feelings and reactions a therapist has towards a client, which often carry important information about what is happening in the therapeutic relationship, and sometimes about the therapist’s own unresolved material.

Without a good level of self-knowledge, it can be very difficult to tell the difference between “this is something important about the client” and “this is my own stuff getting triggered”. Both are valuable to notice, but they need to be worked with differently. Personal therapy is one of the main ways therapists develop the capacity to make this distinction, and to use their own reactions as clinical information rather than being unconsciously driven by them.

It doesn’t end when training does

A common assumption is that personal therapy is something you do during training and then move on from, like a qualification you’ve completed. In practice, many experienced therapists continue to have their own therapy, sometimes throughout their careers, and not because something has gone wrong.

The work of being a therapist is demanding. You are, session after session, holding space for other people’s pain, confusion, and difficulty. This takes a toll, even when the work is going well, and even when you find it meaningful. Without your own space to process what arises, both from your clinical work and from your own life, it becomes much harder to sustain this kind of work over time without becoming depleted, defended, or burnt out.

Confidentiality and separation from training

For trainees, it’s often important that personal therapy is kept separate from training institutions and placements, both for confidentiality and so that the relationship can develop without the complications of dual relationships. Many trainees choose to see a therapist who has no connection to their training course, so that what happens in their personal therapy remains entirely their own, separate from any assessment or evaluation processes.

This separation also allows for a different quality of work. In personal therapy, you are not a trainee being observed or assessed. You are simply a person, bringing whatever you need to bring.

What to look for in a therapist if you’re a trainee or qualified practitioner

If you’re looking for your own therapist, whether to fulfil a training requirement or because you recognise the ongoing value of this work, a few things are worth considering:

• Someone with experience working with other therapists and trainees, who understands the particular dynamics involved
• A therapist whose approach resonates with you, not necessarily the same modality you’re training in, though there can be value in experiencing the approach you’re learning from the client’s chair
• Someone independent of your training institution or workplace, to protect confidentiality and avoid dual relationships
• A relationship where you feel able to bring all of yourself, not just a curated, “professional” version

An investment in the work, and in yourself

Personal therapy is sometimes framed purely in terms of professional requirement: hours to log, a box to tick. But for most therapists who engage with it seriously, it becomes something more than that. It is a space that is entirely your own, where the usual rules of being the helper, the professional, the one who holds things together, don’t apply.

Whether you are just starting out in training, or have been practising for years, having your own therapeutic space is not a sign that something is wrong. It’s part of what allows the work, and the person doing it, to remain sustainable, alive, and genuinely helpful to others.