I came to this late, and by an ordinary route.

How I ended up doing this

I spent twenty years in hospitality and then eight running a community café in Edinburgh. Not a caring job on paper. In practice a lot of people sat at the end of the counter on a Tuesday morning and told me things they had told nobody else, because I was there every week and I was not in their life.

After a while I noticed I was doing it badly. I was reassuring people, fixing things, filling silences because the silences made me uncomfortable. I went looking for training that would teach me to stop doing that, and ended up on a diploma.

That is the whole story. There is no dramatic reason, and I am wary of counsellors who lead with theirs.

What I am still learning

I qualified recently. I have supervision every fortnight and I use it properly, which means the difficult parts of my work get looked at by someone more experienced than me. I am slower than I will be in ten years. What I can offer now is close attention, and a lot of care about getting you right rather than getting you sorted.