When I talk to people about what I do and how I help individuals overcome life issues and challenges they genuinely seem interested and impressed. I currently only have to do two to three sessions with most of my clients before they are professing a marked improvement in how they are feeling and thinking about themselves and life. Of course this hasn’t always been the case, in the early days I was using mostly psychoanalytic interventions under hypnosis which can take upwards of 5 sessions.

I absolutely love what I do and am very grateful that I am able to earn a living this way but therapy is expensive!

I am often told that therapy costs too much and I know some therapists that feel guilty or uneasy at the very least, about charging for their services. On the other side of the coin, so to speak, I have other conversations in which I am told I should be charging more for my sessions and that I am ‘undervaluing’ my services. So who is correct and why is therapy expensive?

Therapy is, first and foremost, an investment in yourself. One of the things I ask a potential client who may be thinking about therapy but is wary of spending the money, is that if they spent the same amount of money on a holiday how long, on their return, would the relaxation last? How quickly would they be back to feeling the way they did before they left? Therapy lasts a lifetime, for the same investment. The other thing that seems to be lacking is the understanding that therapy is not just about the hour that you are with your therapist. Quite often therapists will have to do research on the issue presented to them and write notes for each client which takes time. Therapists also have to have professional supervision and pay for continued personal development as part of their professional membership to associations, all of which the client benefits from in the long run. So, for each hour with a client the therapist is probably spending at least another hour in preparation, if not more.

There has been a great deal of talk about mental health in the press and general media over the least fews year and there is definitely a positive move towards to the need to take care of our minds as well as our bodies, yet still, people will happily pay to have their hair and nails done every other week but bulk as spending similar money on their mental health.

Of course therapy is not the only way to improve mental health. Science tells us that regular exercise, good social interaction and things like mindfulness (another thing I teach my clients) and yoga can all improve mental health. There are shelves full of books on self-improvement and there are also free resources scattered all over the internet if you want to go looking for them. However, there is also something to be said for going to sit with someone who is non-judgemental, completely detached from your everyday life and who will guide you through a process of person growth with compassion and empathy.

The other thing worth mentioning here is that the new innovation in therapy that is BWRT is helping to reduce the overall cost of therapy. BWRT does this because it works so much faster than anything else available. I have been a therapist for over 16 years now and have learnt lots of different interventions and ways of working, none of which have some close to BWRT. This therapy is not only fast but can also be used content free which means you don’t even have to tell your therapist what you are experiencing if you are not comfortable doing so. I have had clients with phobia that have left phobia free after just one session. I have had clients with anxiety that have had no more than one session, reporting they are no longer feeling the same way as they did before. With such quick results the cost of therapy is greatly reduced. Of course not every therapy works for every client but with the BBRS (British BrainWorking Research Society) working to improve and qualify the use of BWRT there is no limit to what might be achieved with this intervention in the future.

In my opinion, charging for what we do is a must because people do have to see value in their therapy and they will work harder to help themselves if they make that financial investment. However, I also think it is important to make sure that a service like the one I offer is accessible to as many people as possible and I am always willing to enter into negotiation about charges if I think a client will really benefit but is truly unable to afford the full cost.