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Looking for advice on training to be a therapist (with a focus on autism)

Iain

As part of my ongoing drive to self improvement and giving something back to the community I have been investigating the routes to become a certified psychotherapist so I can offer a mix of pro-bono work and charged for sessions to cover the costs such as insurance, zoom licensing, further education etc.

I spend most of my time in Brazil at the moment so I would probably need a distance learning option such as the Open University, so most look like a 3 year university level courses that will cost me tens of thousands of pounds and 3 years of my life.

I believe there are shorter options available that lead to more of a therapist level qualification so I'm looking into these option to maybe start next Sept.

Does anyone on here have experience of doing courses like these? I would appreciate their perspective on the level of challenge and usefulness of them.

Even suggestions on other qualifications that can be studied for remotely that would enable me to practice as a therapist at the end of it would be very welcome.

  • in reply to DeSpereaux

    You can just lace your life-experiences and education-forays into a helix of practical-scholarly might..

  • in reply to DeSpereaux

    I would consider any level 2 to course to be akin to Level 3 term.. honestly there’s no reason why you can’t patchwork your own Level 4 together and compile a series of level 2 of your choice..Nerd

  • Erm.. well whenever I get the Level 2 education bug, I search for an online course on freecoursesengland, from there they direct you to a service-provider..

  • I have some experience of this type of course but at a basic level. There's benefit in doing it "in person" as it's more interactive and you get more out of the communication. In order to practise the skills needed to be a counsellor, such as active listening and questioning,  you have to be comfortable talking about your own problems in order that others can practise on you. The basic course I did involved talking about our day but if you do more in depth courses I'm sure you'd go into more personal areas. Our tutor said the higher level course was known as "the divorce course".

    I enjoyed it and would really like to take it further at some point. My local FE college does counselling courses which are blended between online and in person (for the lower levels at least). The higher level (L3 or L4) usually involves a residential. You don't need a degree to be a counsellor but I think the minimum is L3 (more likely L4) plus work based practise. More things are online now but I'd say there's definitely benefit to real person contact. As well, the quality of what you learn depends on the tutor. My friend did a course snd found it useless whereas I got quite a bit out of mine.

    Don't know if any of that helps. This information is about to be a counsellor not a psychotherapist but it might be a quicker route in upon which to build up your skills.