From Crisis to Calling: My Journey to Becoming a Therapist

“If you had asked me as a little girl what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you without any hesitation - a fashion designer. I had big dreams, bold ideas, and absolutely no intention of becoming a therapist. Life, however, had other plans.”

In 2025, I opened my own private therapy practice. That sentence still feels surreal to write. Because the path to getting here wasn’t neat, or predictable, or easy. It was messy. It was painful. And in many ways, it was guided, not by logic, but by something deeper. A calling, perhaps. Or the universe stepping in when I couldn’t.

When I agreed to go back to university to retrain as an integrative counsellor, I was in crisis. I was struggling in recovery from alcohol and substances. My father had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and didn’t have long to live. Life felt unmanageable. I wasn’t ready to let him go. He was my hero, my teacher, the person I wanted to make proud. The man who was meant to walk me down the aisle one day. Losing him felt like losing my anchor to the world.

I remember telling him just before he passed away that I was going back to university to train to become a therapist. “What on earth do you want to do that for, sit all day and listen to other people’s problems?” he replied. I smiled, but inside something clicked. Because no. That wasn’t how I saw it at all. I saw meaning. I saw connection. I saw healing. And even though he didn’t quite understand it at the time, I like to think he would understand now.

Back then, I was barely holding myself together. Studying while grieving, while recovering, while trying to rebuild my life felt almost impossible some days. But something unexpected happened along the way. The course didn’t just teach me how to help others, it also taught me who I was. Thousands of words written on self-awareness. Long nights reflecting on theorists, philosophies, and what it truly means to be human. But the hardest and most transformative work wasn’t academic it was personal, looking within and working with my therapist and in process groups. I had to face parts of myself I had spent years running from.

As an addict, I carried deep internalised shame. I had abandonment wounds from childhood. I had early trauma from being sent to boarding school so young. I understand now that in the 90s, this was common and no one could have known the emotional impact. But as a sensitive child, I couldn’t understand why I was sent away from home. And that wound stayed with me.

Through my own therapy, I began to untangle these experiences. I learned to sit with grief - raw, painful, and unfinished. I wrote through it. I cried through it. I healed through it. Slowly, compassion replaced shame. Understanding replaced blame. And safety began to replace fear. Somewhere in that process, I realised something profound: the very things I had survived were shaping the therapist I was becoming.

One day recently, a client asked me, “Do you like your job?” I didn’t even hesitate.“I love it” I responded. Because this work is special. It is a privilege to sit with someone and help them build a healthier relationship with their mind, their body, and their emotions. Mental health is finally being talked about more openly, and therapy, to me, is like going to the gym, but for your mind. I am your personal trainer until you can do it on your own. If I can help someone feel safe and regulated in their own body, they can do almost anything. By working through wounds, we soothe the nervous system. We learn to recognise triggers, understand patterns, and develop healthier ways to cope. That is not just a job, that is an honour.

And here’s the part that still moves me: all of my pain, all of my struggle, all of my recovery it wasn’t wasted. It became the foundation of my work.

Keeping my clients emotionally safe is everything to me. I work hard to stay regulated myself, because safety begins with presence. With steadiness. With compassion.

And then one day, I realised I had done it.

I had stayed sober.
I had completed the degree.
I had built a private practice.

From a life that once felt unmanageable, I had created one that felt meaningful. Now, as I enter 2026, I do so with hope, excitement, and deep gratitude. New clients. New opportunities. A practice built on authenticity, compassion, and healing. And I know, without a doubt, that my dad is somewhere looking down on me with that familiar twinkle in his eye, saying:

“Well done. You did it.”