Andrew Logan
3/5
In some ways it seems rather pointless writing a review of One in Four, in that there very affordable and long term counselling options are something you would very unlikely find privately, which means that they will always have a long waiting list, regardless of the quality of their work. That said, I guess you get what you pay for. The first counsellor I saw at One in Four was training in Transactional Analysis, getting in enough hours to move on to a private practice. This is probably one of the biggest drawbacks with One in Four. All of their counsellors are voluntary and many in training, so while sometimes enthusiastic, they can often lack real experience to draw upon, especially specific experience in working with abuse and trauma or knowledge of current developments in the field (no one had even heard of CPTSD). From working both one to one and joining a handful of their ongoing groups, I have come to realise that like anything that relies upon volunteers, some of their counsellors are really, really great and some are absolute stinkers. Some seem very committed to nurturing a client centred relationship and some seem to just be on some kind of big personal ego trip. The first counsellor I saw was impeccable in his commitment and very well meaning but also very closed off emotionally, focusing it seemed to me, on a need to constantly fit my experience into the theoretical model he was studying. The upshot of which was that I never really felt safe enough to open up to him fully. I took a break after we finished up, and then tried again a few months later. It was this second round that really caused me no end of misery. The first counsellor never showed up at all, leaving me waiting and somewhat confused in an empty building. The second counsellor told me in our third session that due to a ‘supervisory conflict’, she could no longer see me. The third counsellor I saw for a few months and was just beginning to form some trust with him when I got a call on the morning of the day of our appointment telling me that due to personal issues he would not be available that week. This happened 4 weeks in a row. No explanation and no indication of when he might be available again. I then discovered that he had left the practice altogether and there was not even the space made for a much needed closure. The fourth counsellor was one of the most energetically aggressive men I have met and didn’t even get my name right on our first appointment. An appointment I curtailed early, because I felt very, very uncomfortable and not at all safe. I made this clear in an email to One in Four's administrator, Michelle, when I got home, who never responded to my message. And while I am under the impression that Michelle is clinically trained, in agreement with another of the reviewers here, considering that the organisation is dealing with people who are easily triggered and often suffering from acute anxiety and depression, she does seem entirely insensitive to this fact. Some weeks later I sent another message asking whether they had given up on me and was told that they simply didn’t have anyone else to offer and that there was now a 6 month waiting list. On reflection, I guess I am luckily that I am quite resilient, because even though I had started to enter a profound grieving process during my time with the third counsellor, I just about managed to pull myself back from the brink, without support and get over what on reflection I experienced as an acute sense of abandonment, just as I had started to open up and show some vulnerability. I guess if you were someone who was less resilient than I am, you may well have found the experience (re)-traumatising, to say the least. So, would I recommend One in Four? Well, if you really do need long term counselling and you haven’t got much cash, get on their waiting list and hope that you get assigned a counsellor who can support you and stick by you. But please, do take really good care of YOU in the process, because as you can see, not everything is rosy in the One on Four garden.
