Finding a counsellor who actually gets it

If you are LGBTQIA+, live with HIV, work in a creative or performing field, or carry experience that does not fit common assumptions, you may look for a counsellor who already works with people like you. That is reasonable. But it is worth being clear about what that familiarity actually offers.

What “who I work with” actually tells you

When a counsellor names the people and experiences they usually work with, it does not mean they understand you. But it can tell you something useful.

It suggests they work with more than one version of a client. Naming a range of people and experiences does not tell you how flexible they will be with you, but it can give you some indication of the breadth of their practice.

It can also offer shorthand. Some things may not need explaining from the first sentence. You may spend less time establishing basic context before getting to the experience you actually want to talk about.

That is what familiarity can offer. Not comprehension. A shorter runway. It is a reasonable thing to want. It is not the same as being known.

Understanding is not brought to the room. It is made there.

You have your own way of describing your experience, and your counsellor brings their own ways of understanding. At the beginning, neither of you knows exactly what particular words, experiences or silences will come to mean in the work between you.

That shared language gets built, slowly, in the relationship itself. Not through your counsellor’s prior experience, and not through anything you disclose in a first session. Through the actual, ongoing work of talking, being misunderstood sometimes, and correcting that.

This means a counsellor with years of experience with people like you can still fail to get this particular thing about your particular life. And a counsellor without that specific experience may still build real understanding with you, if they remain open to learning how you experience your world.

What you are checking for, in a first conversation, is not whether they already understand your world. You could not know that yet, and neither could they. You are checking whether there seems to be room for that understanding to be built.

You are allowed to be selective

The first counsellor you contact does not have to be the one you continue with. If a session does not feel like a place that understanding could grow, that is not a failure of counselling. It may simply mean you keep looking.

If you are looking for counselling informed by familiarity with LGBTQIA+ life, living with HIV, or creative and performing arts experience, and space for the rest of what makes your story yours, you are welcome to get in touch.