Doing therapy is a long-term investment in yourself and your life. But it can feel very expensive, and sometimes the cost might not feel like it matches the amount of time you see your therapist.
It can look like therapists are making a lot of money when you consider the cost of a session and how many hours there are in a working week. However, it is important to note a therapist will not be seeing clients all day ever day. A therapy session is an intense piece of work for a therapist; it requires total focus and for the therapist to park any of their own issues or worries at the door. As such, many therapists limit the number of clients they see to ensure they have the emotional bandwidth for what they are taking on.
A CTUK survey of 1,265 counsellors and psychotherapists … carried out in 2021, titled bluntly ‘It’s time to talk about money’,4 found a significant level of poverty. Fourteen per cent were claiming income-related benefits, 30% were relying on non-counselling work for their main source of income, five per cent were not working, three per cent of qualified practitioners and four per cent of trainees had used food banks, 30% earned less than £100 a week and the majority took home less than £400.
To help demystify why therapy costs so much, here are some of the invisible things that your session fee pays towards. I hope this helps it feel like the cost is worth it.
What does my session fee pay for?
Supervision
Your therapist will meet with a senior therapist who is accredited as a Supervisor to discuss their work. This ensures they are working ethically, that they are keeping up with best practice, and that they are providing the highest level of care.
Continued learning
Your therapist will have had long-term training to qualify which will give them a grounding in the issues clients might bring. However, the will continue to do training and learning to hone their skills. This could be learning a new technique, or keeping up to date with legal and medical developments, it could be studying a particular condition that a client has in more depth to ensure they are providing the best care.
Administration time
Responding to messages, emails and calls, doing their banking and sending invoices are all a regular part of being a therapist. Whilst they may only take a few minutes on their own, they add up over time.
Room rental
Your therapist will have to pay for the room they are working from. Different places have different rental arrangements; some rent by the hour, or by the day or half day. This may mean your therapist will have to pay for a room even if you cancel the session or they don’t have a client in that slot at that time.
Networking and community building
As part of their work, your therapist may attend events or get in touch with community resources. This builds their knowledge of what other services are out there and puts them in touch with other therapists. This means that if there is anything you need support with that they can’t provide, they’re more likely to know of someone who can.
Private Therapy and self-care
Many therapists will be in therapy themselves, or will engage in different activities to look after themselves. Being a therapist is a great privilege, but it comes with a lot of responsibility to sit with people through tough times. A therapist must ensure they are emotionally able to cope with this and that they are not getting distracted by their own biases, history, or perceptions in the room. Being in therapy themselves gives a space for your therapist to consider their perspectives and to analyse why they might respond in certain ways.
Staying up to date with legislation and regulation
Therapists must make sure they are behaving within the law and in an ethical way. This means they need to know a whole range of things from data protection rules to laws around mental health sectioning to understand what it means for a client. They will spend time researching this, attending training, or receiving advice.
Liaising with other medical professionals
If a client is under the care of a community mental health team or is getting support from a support worker or their GP, the therapist may get in touch with them to ensure they are offering joined up support. This can involve going to meetings, spending time writing reports or speaking to professionals on the phone.
Insurance and Professional Body Membership
Your therapist needs to have appropriate insurance for the work they do. They will also need to part of a professional body that regulates the industry. This gives them support and access to information, but it also gives you a clear set of standards they have to meet up to so you know what you can expect of them. The cost of these can vary, and if they are members of multiple professional bodies they can add up.
Materials
Anything your therapist uses in the session they will have bought themselves. It could be as simple as pens and paper to draw images, or it could be worksheets from professional manuals.
Sick Leave, Annual Leave and Pension
Finally, it’s worth noting that when your therapist is self-employed they need to ensure they make enough money to cover when they are off sick, or need to take a days leave. They also need to make contributions to their pension for their future. All of this contributes to the therapist’s sense of safety in life; it means they won’t keep working even when they’re sick, or take on too many clients to try to make ends meet.
When you’re paying a therapist you are paying for more than the minutes you sit down with them. You are paying for their years of expertise and training. The time they’ve spent preparing for your session or making sure they can be fully present when you enter the room.
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