Viewpoint: Family ruptures
Therapy Today, July-August 2026

I was so excited to finally begin the Level 4 Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling. When I started my Level 2 a few years ago I wasn’t sure if it would feel like the right path, but as it transpired I felt right at home. As I approached 50 I felt I had found the next chapter in my life. Now completing my final year of Level 4 and clinical work on placement my feelings haven’t changed. However, what I hadn’t bargained for was the impact of my training on my relationships with my family of origin.

Like many students I’d heard the light-hearted comments about counsellor training being the ‘divorce course’, but I hadn’t quite appreciated the ruptures and life-changing impact it could have on significant relationships outside romantic partnerships. It was a rude awakening. 

I would be surprised if any student comes out of the experience the same person as they went in: I certainly am not the same person I was two years ago. A significant aspect of training is personal development and growth, in order to become a safe, effective practitioner. My self-awareness has grown exponentially, having spent a huge amount of time reflecting on myself, my impact on others and vice versa as well as on the way in which I had been living my life. I learned that I was living incongruently according to scripts that had been in place since childhood, avoiding conflict at almost any cost and feeling unable to communicate as my true self. My boundaries were flimsy at best, bending in the wind to accommodate how others thought I should live my life. While outsiders looking in saw a successful and confident woman, there was so much more going on in my personal life. I felt unheard, unseen and that the balance of giving and receiving care, support and kindness was out of balance. 

Self-awareness 

Things are different now; training has forced me to become the person I always was on the inside. I question myself more, I look at my actions with new lenses, I wonder more about the reasons behind the behaviours of others, I have less judgment and I accept that I cannot force people to change. While exhausting at times, this level of self-awareness has been essential to ensure that I minimise harm to my clients and understand why they may feel and behave in the way they do. 

Through my penultimate year of training I became painfully aware of my external locus of evaluation and where my conditions of worth stemmed from. The penny dropped: I had been constantly wondering and worrying about what others thought of me, especially my family of origin to whom I looked for validation. I was making decisions that wouldn’t rock the boat. There was a significant fork in the road when I was told I ‘shouldn’t’ carry on with my training because of the impact it would have within the family. I became hurt and confused: why didn’t I matter? Having worked through and reflected on why it was deemed OK to make such a request of me, and why I responded with silence, I know that if the same words were said to me today my response would be very different. 

Impact on relationships 

Now out the other side I was recently reminded that ‘students choose to go into training… their families and friends do not.’¹ It’s a point I hadn’t really considered. I have tried to have conversations with family members about what I do, but I don’t believe it’s really understood until you are in it yourself. It is easy to forget that while I am on a journey they are not on it with me: I am not the same person, and understandably others may feel unsettled by changes in me and push back as a result. While it has been painful feeling unsupported, perhaps it helps us to understand it better if we approach these ruptures as if a client has brought the issue to us. It somehow feels easier to bring the core conditions into professional practice than it does to familial relationships. 

I have hunted around for research and information on the impact of counselling training on a student’s significant relationships but there is relatively little research in this area. The research there is mostly focuses on romantic relationships. In my own experience, and anecdotally in the experiences of my peers, the trainings significantly impact other relationships, right from friendships through to family. I have questioned why there is such a lack of research in this area, and have wondered if it isn’t being taken seriously. And if so, why? 

Support 

As someone who has been through traumatic experiences in my past I am no stranger to counselling and the profound positive impact it can have. Indeed, as many students find, it is this ‘wounded self’ that brought me to the point of training in the first place. I would go as far as to say that anyone considering therapy training should experience their own personal counselling before taking the plunge. Regardless, I find personal therapy not only essential for experiencing what it is like to be in the client’s chair but also to work through the issues that come up during training, including the ruptures that inevitably happen within our significant relationships. 

The role of tutors and training bodies in this area is also essential. While some training bodies do a great job of providing that support, perhaps this needs to be revisited and mandatory requirements placed on the training bodies themselves with more focused and explicit support put in place. It may be helpful to students if training bodies took a more proactive approach to explaining how training can impact relationships of all varieties before a course even commences as well as provide support throughout the process. 

I appreciate how difficult it must be for tutors to get the right balance between supporting students as their tutor and inadvertently becoming their counsellor. With a background in learning and development I aspire to one day become a counselling tutor myself. 

Of course, we can look to our peers for emotional support in triads and outside the classroom. But while I am fortunate enough to have supportive peers, not all counselling trainees experience this in their cohorts. This, to some extent, is the luck of the draw. 

It would be remiss of me not to mention my husband. I have been very fortunate to have his love, support and interest. I am sure it’s not been plain sailing for him, but without him supporting me and being my cheerleader when it felt like other relationships were falling apart I don’t know if I could have stayed the course. 

I feel that there is a need for greater awareness, discussion and research around such ruptures, and as a baseline students need to know that it’s ‘not just them’. I wonder if this impact of training needs to be communicated more clearly before and during training as the personal consequences can be wider ranging than may be appreciated, and in some instances devastating. Losing significant personal relationships, whether in the short or long term, has such an impact on us students at a time when we are already going through intensive change intrapersonally. 

While the impact of my training on my family relationships has been extensive, if the clocks went back I would certainly do the course again. It’s taken me nearly half a century but I am now living congruently. 

The ripples of impact within my family have been deeply confusing and upsetting but they were relationships built on who I ‘should’ be. As I move forward I continue to learn so much. I am living my life as the strong, confident person I always have been, unafraid to be me, less afraid of conflict. I am not the person I was before, and for that I am profoundly grateful.