It’s unusual – but why?
It’s normal to receive home visits from health care professionals. When you’ve just had a baby, or are physically ill or in recovery, its hard for you to leave the house so your midwife, occupational therapist, physiotherapists (and so on) will visit you at home.
When it comes to emotional and psychological support, however, you’re usually expected to travel to the counsellor. Why?
To some extent it’s to do with how we’re trained and what we’re used to. But it’s also to do with what the counsellor is responsible for and feels comfortable with.
Given the nature of the work, the counsellor needs to create a space that is safe enough for both client and counsellor to build trust and focus on the client’s concerns (e.g. no interruptions, predictable environment, confidentiality) .
These matters form part of our training and we learn more from experience about why they’re so important. If the counsellor works from their own familiar room, then they can control the environment for their own comfort and provide a safe place for the client away from their everyday life.
For many counsellors and clients this is their preferred way of doing things, and it works very well. But it’s not the only way.
Counselling outside the consulting room
There have always been therapeutic approaches that explore different environments (e.g. Wild Therapy) and individual counsellors who prefer to work outside the constraints of the consulting room (e.g. walking in nature).
For these therapists, safety, confidentiality and comfort are just as important, and these matters become part of what is negotiated with the client from the outset.
So if I see you in your home, then these are the things we’ll discuss together. You’ll be in your familiar space and it’s I who will be a stranger to it. What will that be like? What do we each need? There may be other people around, so how will we manage interruptions?
When we work in your home, we create and manager the working space together.
The benefits of home based counselling
You may choose home based counselling for the benefits it offers.
- Access – your circumstances may mean that it’s hard for you to leave the house, so the only way to access support is if the counsellor comes to you.
- Discretion – if the counsellor comes to you, then you have complete discretion; there’s no danger of bumping into someone you know and having to answer awkward questions.
- Convenience – the travel time to and from sessions is absorbed by the counsellor rather than by you.
- Comfort – you know what you need to feel comfortable and to manage any anxiety; if we meet in your home space then your environment is familiar, you’re in control and you can organise it the way you want.
If home based counselling appeals to you, then please contact me.
Lively Body Mind 