What Does a Counsellor Actually Do?

It's a fair question, and the honest answer is probably not what you'd expect.

Most people's ideas about counsellors come from somewhere between TV therapy scenes and vague cultural impressions of someone nodding slowly while you talk about your childhood. Neither is quite right, and both are a bit off-putting if that's what you're imagining.

So here's what a counsellor actually does — at least in person-centred counselling, which is what I do.

The main thing: listening properly

This sounds simple, and in some ways it is. But it's rarer than it seems. When most people listen to you, they're also thinking about their own response, drawing on their own experience, forming judgements, getting ready to offer an opinion. That's natural — it's just how people work.

In a counselling session, the listening is different. The attention is entirely on you — on what you're saying, on what might be underneath what you're saying, on whether you seem to be saying the thing you actually mean or something adjacent to it. There's no agenda running in parallel. No response being composed while you're still mid-sentence.

That kind of attention is quite unusual in everyday life, and most people find it feels different from any other conversation they have. Not always comfortable, but different in a way that matters.

What a counsellor doesn't do

This is probably more surprising: a counsellor doesn't give advice. Not generally, not in person-centred work. That surprises most people, because it seems like the obvious useful thing to do — you're struggling with something, surely the person in the room should just tell you what to do?

But advice doesn't usually work the way we hope it does. You can be told what to do by people who love you and still not do it, because the understanding of why isn't there yet. What changes things more reliably is getting to a point where you understand yourself and your situation well enough to find your own answer — and that's not something anyone else can give you.

A counsellor also doesn't diagnose. That's not what the role is. If you come in and describe something that sounds like depression or anxiety, a counsellor won't hand you a label. They'll listen to what that experience is actually like for you, and we'll work with that.

And a counsellor doesn't judge. That one matters. Whatever you say in a session — however uncomfortable or difficult or strange it feels to say it — the response you get won't be judgement. That's not because counsellors are saints. It's because the role specifically requires setting that aside, and good training and regular supervision make it possible to do so consistently.

What the work actually looks like

In a session, you talk. I listen. I might reflect back something I've noticed — a word you kept returning to, something that seemed to carry weight, a contradiction between what you said and how you said it. Not to catch you out or prove a point, but because hearing something said back can sometimes make it land differently than it did when it was in your own head.

I might ask a question — usually an open one, something that gives you room to go in whatever direction feels right rather than yes/no. Sometimes sitting with a question without immediately answering it is where something useful happens.

Sometimes the session is quite quiet. Not because nothing's happening, but because the space to think without having to perform or rush is itself useful.

The session is fifty minutes. At the end of it, you haven't necessarily solved anything — though sometimes things do shift in ways that are hard to explain. What tends to happen, over time, is a gradual increase in clarity about yourself and what you need. That's slower than advice. But it tends to last longer.

What about all the different approaches?

Different counsellors work differently, and it's worth knowing the broad categories. CBT counsellors work more structured, often with exercises or worksheets between sessions, focusing on patterns of thinking and behaviour. Psychodynamic counsellors look more at the past and the unconscious. Integrative counsellors draw on several approaches depending on what's useful.

Person-centred counselling — my approach — sits on the principle that you already have what you need within you, and the counsellor's job is to create the conditions where you can access it. That means providing warmth, honesty, and the kind of non-judgmental attention described above, and trusting that you are the expert on your own experience.

There's more detail on the about page if you want to know more about how I work specifically. Or if you'd rather just have a conversation, the free 20 minutes is the best way to get a feel for it.