Questions about therapy?

Start there.

“I don’t really know where to start” is a perfectly good first sentence in therapy.

You might know exactly what’s going on. You might just know that something doesn’t feel right. You might have ten different things happening at once and no idea which one matters most.

You don’t have to work that out before you come.

That’s part of the work.

A human being, for starters.

Your therapist should listen to you, take you seriously and create a space where you can increasingly be yourself.

They might ask questions, notice patterns, gently challenge you, help you make connections or offer different ways of looking at something.

Different therapists work differently — and the relationship between you matters.

Therapy shouldn’t feel like something that’s simply being done to you. It’s something you and your therapist build together.

It happens.

A therapist can be brilliant at what they do and still not be the right therapist for you.

Sometimes a relationship needs a few sessions to settle. Sometimes you know fairly quickly that the fit isn’t right.

Either way, you’re allowed to talk about it.

In fact, being able to say “I’m not sure this is working for me” can be an important part of therapy itself.

And if it still doesn’t feel right, finding somebody else is absolutely okay.

No.

You get to decide what you talk about and when.

A good therapist may gently invite you to explore things that feel difficult, but therapy isn’t an interrogation and you shouldn’t be forced to disclose something before you’re ready.

Trust takes time.

You can cry.

You can also laugh, swear, get angry, sit quietly, change the subject, say “I don’t know” seventeen times or turn up saying you’ve had a perfectly good week and have absolutely nothing to talk about.

All allowed.

Therapy doesn’t have to look serious to be meaningful.

Not at all.

Attachment. Trauma. Somatic. Psychodynamic. Person-centred. Integrative. Regulation. Inner child. Transference.

Therapy has a lot of language.

Some of it can be useful. Some of it can make something relatively simple sound incredibly complicated.

You don’t need a psychology degree to understand yourself.

If your therapist uses a word you don’t understand, ask them what they mean. They should be able to explain it in normal human language.

There are lots of therapeutic approaches and, yes, it can get confusing.

Some therapists focus more on your past and how it affects you now. Some concentrate on what’s happening in the present. Some are more structured and practical. Others work more relationally or creatively.

And many therapists draw from more than one approach.

The letters after someone’s name can matter — but they aren’t the whole story.

How the therapist works, whether they understand what’s important to you and whether you feel able to build a relationship with them matter too.

No.

People come to therapy for all kinds of reasons.

You might be dealing with anxiety, depression or trauma. You might be going through a breakup, questioning a relationship, grieving, struggling at work, thinking about your identity, dealing with family stuff or trying to understand patterns you keep finding yourself in.

Or life might look pretty good from the outside and you still want somewhere to think.

You don’t need to be in crisis to have therapy.

There’s no qualifying round.

You don’t have to prove that you’re struggling enough.

If something is affecting you, taking up space in your head or getting in the way of how you want to live, it’s worth talking about.

They’re human, not robots — but their job isn’t to sit there deciding whether you’ve made all the correct life choices.

Therapy should give you room to be honest about the complicated, contradictory and occasionally messy reality of being a person.

That doesn’t mean your therapist will agree with everything you say.

A good therapeutic relationship can include challenge and accountability as well as compassion.

Mostly, yes — but confidentiality has limits.

Your therapist should explain these clearly when you start working together.

There are circumstances where they may need to share information because of serious concerns about safety, safeguarding or legal requirements.

You should know what those limits are rather than discovering them unexpectedly.

This one matters.

Having had therapy before doesn’t automatically mean you’ve experienced good therapy.

Maybe you didn’t feel understood. Maybe the therapist wasn’t right for you. Maybe something about the power, culture, language or relationship didn’t work. Maybe you weren’t ready. Or maybe something happened that simply wasn’t okay.

You don’t have to pretend that experience didn’t happen when you start again.

Tell your new therapist.

They should be willing to hear what didn’t work before and talk with you about what you might need this time.

You shouldn’t have to spend your whole therapy session translating your existence.

No therapist will know everything about every culture, identity or lived experience. That’s impossible.

But they should be willing to listen, stay curious, recognise what they don’t know and understand that what’s happening in your life doesn’t exist separately from the world you live in.

Culture, race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, family, faith, community and social experiences can all be part of therapy when they’re relevant to you.

Yes.

Therapy doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

The things happening around you can affect what’s happening inside you.

You shouldn’t have to leave the real world outside the therapy room.

Therapy can be expensive. Pretending otherwise isn’t particularly helpful.

But there may be different ways of accessing support.

Therapy Rebels offers low-cost online counselling, alongside our Collective of therapists with different fees, experience and specialisms.

We also work with community organisations to help bring counselling into spaces where people already feel connected and supported.

If cost is the thing stopping you, have a look at our Low-Cost Counselling options before deciding therapy isn’t available to you.

You don’t necessarily need to know.

Instead, think about what matters to you.

Do you want someone who understands a particular experience or identity? Someone who works with trauma? Relationships? Grief? Neurodivergence? Family patterns? Anxiety? Intergenerational stuff?

Do you want someone warm? Direct? Gentle? Challenging? Structured? Creative?

You can use our Find a Therapist service to help you think through what you’re looking for and find someone who might be a good fit.

Annoying answer: it depends.

Some people want support with something specific for a relatively short period. Others want to explore deeper patterns, relationships or experiences over a longer time.

You don’t have to know the answer on day one.

You and your therapist can keep talking about how the work is going and whether therapy is still useful to you.

Congratulations. You have experienced one of therapy’s most normal moments.

Silence is okay.

Sometimes the thing that comes after “I’ve got nothing to talk about today” turns out to be surprisingly important.

And sometimes you’ve genuinely got nothing.

That’s okay too.

Therapy can’t change what happened to you, make other people behave differently or magically remove everything difficult from your life.

What it can do is give you somewhere to understand yourself better, recognise patterns, process experiences, try different ways of responding and make more conscious choices about what happens next.

Sometimes the change is big.

Sometimes it’s simply noticing yourself doing the same old thing — and realising that this time, you have a choice.

Yes.

Our low-cost online counselling service offers weekly counselling with carefully selected trainee therapists for £140 per month.

Find out more about low-cost counselling and how to get started

Have a browse through the Therapy Rebels Collective. Our therapists bring different identities, lived experiences, therapeutic approaches and specialist areas of work.

You can explore their profiles and see who speaks to you on the Our Therapists page.

Yes. Our Find a Therapist matching service is there for exactly that.

Tell us a little about what’s bringing you to therapy, what matters to you and what you’re looking for in a therapist, and we can help connect you with someone from the Therapy Rebels Collective who could be a good fit.

Use Find a Therapist

We know that therapy doesn’t always get it right.

Therapy Rebels was created around a more relevant, relatable and culturally and socially informed approach to therapy. Our therapists understand that who you are, where you come from and the world you live in are part of the conversation.

We take finding the right fit seriously – so we’ll do our very best to match you with someone you can connect with. And if it doesn’t quite work out we’ll listen to your feedback.

Potentially, yes.

Counselling in Your Community is about working in partnership with charities, CICs, community organisations and other spaces to bring emotional support closer to the people already using them.

Tell us about your community and what you’re seeing on the ground, and we can explore what kind of support might work.

Counselling in your community

Absolutely.

Through For The Culture Counselling, we seek and raise funding to provide free emotional support within selected spaces supporting marginalised and minoritised communities.

We’re also interested in working collaboratively with organisations to identify potential funding and build projects together.

For The Culture Counselling

Yes.

We work with organisations looking for a more relevant, flexible and socially and culturally informed approach to workplace wellbeing.

That might include individual counselling, group sessions, workshops or a programme designed specifically around your team.

Find out more at our Workplace Wellbeing page

We’re building a collective of therapists who share our values and want to be part of doing therapy a little differently.

We’re interested in therapists who are thoughtful, creative, open-minded, socially and culturally aware and committed to making therapy relevant to the people and communities they work with.

Join us through our Join the Collective page

Yes please.

Therapy Rebels actively fundraises to help us bring counselling and emotional support into communities where it can make a difference.

Keep an eye on our socials for events and crowdfunders, or get in touch if you’d like to support, partner with or collaborate with us.