There's a sentence I say often, in one form or another: "I'm not a counsellor." I say it to people I sit with, and I say it here, in writing, because it matters more than it might first appear.
It would be easy to blur the line. I listen closely. I ask thoughtful questions. I've spent years studying the Enneagram and human motivation, and I spend hours each week on a UK mental health helpline, sitting with people in some of their hardest moments. None of that makes me a counsellor. I'm training as a counsellor, Level 2 complete and currently studying at Level 3 (more on that on the About page), and until that training is complete, the honest word for what I offer is helper, not counsellor. This isn't false modesty. It's an ethical line, and it's worth explaining why I hold it so firmly. I've set out the fuller version of these principles on my Ethics page; this post is the shorter, more personal version of the same thing.
Why "helper, not a counsellor" isn't just semantics
In the helping professions, titles aren't decoration. "Counsellor" signals a specific thing to the person hearing it: recognised training, a code of ethics, supervision, accountability to a professional body, and a level of competence to work with certain kinds of distress safely. When someone comes to a counsellor, they're placing trust not just in a person, but in a whole structure standing behind that person.
If I let that word attach to me before it's earned, I'm borrowing trust I haven't yet built the scaffolding to hold. That might sound abstract, but it has real consequences. Someone in a fragile moment might disclose something that needs a trained clinical response, believing they're speaking to someone equipped to give it. If I've allowed the label to slip, even unintentionally, I've set them up to expect a level of skill and safety I can't yet guarantee.
What a helper actually offers
None of this means the helping I do is worthless. Quite the opposite. Being present with someone, listening without judgement, reflecting back what you hear, offering a steady, non-anxious presence: this has genuine value. Some of the most meaningful support people receive doesn't come from a therapy room at all. It comes from a friend, a mentor, a volunteer on the other end of a phone line at three in the morning.
What I try to offer as a helper is real. It's rooted in years of studying how people are put together, what drives them, where they get stuck, and how they grow, and that's exactly what sits behind the Enneagram sessions I run with individuals, couples, and teams. But it sits inside a boundary. I'm not diagnosing. I'm not treating. I'm not holding the kind of clinical responsibility a counsellor holds for someone working through trauma, addiction, or a mental health crisis. When a conversation moves into territory that needs that kind of care, my job is to recognise it and point towards someone who can properly help, not to keep going because the conversation feels rich or because I want to be useful.
Why I'm not rushing the label
I could, in theory, describe myself more loosely. Plenty of people in this space do, and language around "coach," "guide," "practitioner," and "counsellor" gets used fairly interchangeably in casual conversation. But loose language creates real risk for the person on the other side of it, and that's reason enough to resist it.
There's also something I've noticed in myself: the pull to be seen as more qualified than I currently am. It's a very human pull. Nobody wants to undersell what they offer, and there's a quiet ego satisfaction in being mistaken for something you're working towards but haven't yet reached. I try to notice that pull and set it aside, because the people I'm sitting with deserve accuracy, not my comfort.
Training as a counsellor has sharpened this for me rather than softened it. The training makes the gap between helper and counsellor more visible, not less. Each stage reminds me how much structured skill, supervised practice, and ethical grounding sits behind that title, and how much of it I still have ahead of me.
An honest kind of help
None of this is an argument against the value of helpers. If anything, I think there's real unmet need for exactly this kind of support. A listening ear, a patient presence, someone who can sit with difficult feelings without flinching: this matters enormously, and it doesn't require a counselling qualification to be genuinely valuable.
What it does require is honesty about what it is. A good helper knows the edges of their role and works confidently within them. They don't need to inflate the title to be worth someone's time.
Where this leaves me
So when I describe myself, I'll keep saying helper. Not because it's a smaller word, but because it's the true one, for now. It tells people what they're getting: someone who listens carefully, who has studied human nature seriously, and who knows precisely where the edge of that capability sits and when to hand things over to someone trained to go further.
I'd rather earn the word "counsellor" properly, through the training, supervision, and accreditation that give it meaning, than wear it early and risk letting someone down when it matters most. If you're curious how these principles show up in practice, the full picture is on my Ethics page, and if you'd like to talk through whether Enneagram work is the right fit for you, you're welcome to get in touch.