A Gap in the Culture

There’s a question that’s been circling in my mind:

Is there space for someone like me in the existing therapy world?

I don’t mean space to force myself into the system. I mean space to be who I truly am — soulful, intuitive, trauma-aware, open-hearted — without having to shrink or mask myself to be accepted.

The truth is, I’ve started to feel like the answer might be no.

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What the BACP Represents

The BACP — the main regulatory body for counsellors in the UK — exists to ensure standards, ethics, and client safety. And that matters. But over time, it has also become a system that:

• Favors conformity over depth.
• Prioritizes textbook knowledge over lived experience.
• Frames professionalism in ways that often exclude trauma survivors, neurodivergent individuals, and soul-led practitioners.

I get the intention. But in practice, it leaves many of us — those who have healed outside the lines — feeling like we don’t belong.

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The Overlooked Value of Lived Experience

I’ve walked through fire. I’ve known grief, psychosis, abandonment, burnout, and breakdown — and I’ve slowly, painfully, learned how to turn toward it all instead of away.

And yet, when I stand beside someone who memorized theory but hasn’t met their own shadow, they’re the one deemed “safe” by the system.

It raises the question: What does true safety actually look like?

To me, it looks like congruence. Humility. Inner work. Capacity to sit with pain without needing to fix it. It looks like embodied presence, not polished performance.

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A Glimpse of What’s Possible

I once worked on a peer support worker scheme — not as a counsellor, but as someone offering care and presence from a place of lived experience. And in many ways, it felt like a glimpse into the very thing I now long for.

It was human. Grounded. Real.

But I was also parenting alone, studying counselling, and doing too much. One day a week became one day too many, and I had to let it go.

Still, the experience stayed with me — because it showed me that healing work doesn’t have to look like therapy as we know it. Sometimes, the most healing thing is simply sitting beside someone who’s been through it too.

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A Gap in the Culture

There’s a real gap opening up — not just in the therapy world, but in the culture at large.

People are seeking:

• Relational healing, not rigid protocols.
• Authenticity over neutrality.
• Guides who have been there, not just studied the map.

But the systems built to train and validate therapists haven’t caught up. They’re still holding the line around what therapy used to be, rather than imagining what it could become.

So here we are — with more and more people awakening to their pain, reaching out for support, and discovering that the people most equipped to meet them… aren’t recognized by the institutions in charge.

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What If We Built Something New?

What if we created a new kind of collective?
A new kind of standard?
A new kind of therapist?

One rooted in:

• Ethical care without rigidity,
• Supervision and community without hierarchy,
• Embodiment, relationality, and soul.

It wouldn’t mean rejecting everything that came before — but evolving it.

Maybe the old system was the scaffolding. But now the house is being built differently.

And maybe it’s okay if I don’t fit the mold.
Because maybe the mold is what’s cracking —
so something more human can grow.

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