Chloe Foster
I really hope it doesn’t take a pandemic for email counselling to also kind of surge and become bigger because it did overnight with video calls and it will with email counselling, it certainly will. It will take a little bit of time, I think, for that stigma to reduce, the kind of wondering and questioning and this fear of change in the counselling community. With clients, it’s already there. But counsellors, you need to listen to that and be more ready to like, how can we, how can we make our spaces more accessible, more flexible for both clients and for us?
Josephine Hughes
Welcome to the Good Enough Counsellors podcast, where today I’ve invited Chloe Foster who uses the pronouns they, she, to tell us all about their work as a therapist specialising in helping people from the LGBTQ community. Chloe has also developed additional income streams and is going to share more about how to use email counselling and how that option works for clients and therapists alike. Chloe first started working with me back in 2020. They’d already been delivering CPD training for another organisation, but wanted to branch out on their own. They successfully delivered a number of workshops for therapists on LGBTQ subjects, where they’re known for making their training interactive and engaging.
Their training has been approved and accredited by NCPS, and they’ve now developed further training for therapists on how to use email counselling in their practice. So welcome, Chloe.
Chloe Foster
Oh, thank you for having me. Wow. What an introduction.
Josephine Hughes
I like people to know who we’re meeting, so that’s the reason why I made it so long. Rather a mouthful though for me. So Chloe, let’s let’s start at the beginning. I just want to just let people get to know you a little bit because you are known for working with the LGBTQ niche. And I know from our conversations in the past, when we first sort of had our very first conversation, this had been a niche that you’d been working with, really, ever since you started working in private practice.
But I wondered what that was like for you. How did you go about choosing your niche? And what was it, what did it feel like to really stick your neck out and choose the LGBTQ niche?
Chloe Foster
Oh, great question. Yeah. That’s absolutely right. When we first got in touch, when we first got in touch with you, I had been working; this had been my niche for a while since I’d qualified. I qualified 2016.
So I’d already been doing it for a number of years. The niche was so clear to me from right from really whilst I was whilst I was training. And this is because I had been working already for a number of years with LGBTQ charities. Doing youth work and events work and and and other things in the community, mentoring and stuff with LGBTQ people.
Josephine Hughes
Mhmm.
Chloe Foster
I was really confident and felt very, like, maybe, maybe not confident. I was really excited by this kind of work and it felt like it really suited me. So maybe my confidence was a little bit stronger in this area rather than working with the generic population. I felt like I because of my own experience, my own lived experience of being queer myself, I wanted to to share that and to give that to the counselling world too. Having worked in it for so long.
My counsellor friends on my course were very, when I told them about the fact that, you know, I was gonna set up an LGBTQ specialist private practice. This was gonna be my niche. This is, I don’t know if I was using that word as such, but I was like, that is, that’s gonna be my audience. My counselling friends were like, really? Don’t you, are you, you know, are you sure you’re gonna get enough work?
Is it gonna be enough people? I was like, we’re in Brighton. Definitely gonna get enough people. But even still, there’s so many queer folks out there that were, that are looking for a queer counsellor or someone who gets it really. And I just said to them, the thing is that if you work with, if you work with everyone, then you kinda work with no one.
Because – it’s bland. And, well, maybe you didn’t quite put it in those words, but I think that’s what I was thinking. Because I was just, my friends were just like, I don’t know if I really want to nail down that much. I want to work with everybody. I feel like that’s just being more open.
But, you know, then I think with time told, with time, it really showed really how having a niche, for me anyway, I felt like it was it was – I was gonna use the word easy. It certainly wasn’t easy, but easier, clearer to attract clients because I knew who my audience was. Therefore, I knew what to put out in social media. I knew what to write in blogs. I wasn’t just writing random generic things and ticking all the boxes on my profile.
And so it just made sense to me.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. And I think I mean, one one of the sort of things that we did together was we looked a bit
at your website, didn’t we? Because one of the things you’ve done is you’ve sort of really developed a lot of resources on your website as well, haven’t you? And I think often, you know, we’ve referred people to your website when they’re looking for help because you’ve got, like, a fantastic set of resources on there for people to do with LGBTQ issues, haven’t you? So it’s something you’ve really developed, I think.
Chloe Foster
Yeah. And at that point, when I first got in touch with you, I think I was sort of swimming in ideas. I had lots of things going on. I had lots of, like, blogs and resources and things that I was developing, trying to do some training on my own, trying to do some training for other organisations. And this was, really, I think actually first we worked together in 2020, but I think I first got in touch with you before I relocated to Scotland, so pre pandemic 2019. So doing training online was something that was less heard of.
So I was kind of trying to, like, I was trying to shout like, this is gonna work. We’re gonna be able to do this training online. We can do it on video. So I had that kind of struggle too, but it was swimming in all of these ideas and all of these things that I wanted to do and was trying to do. And really when we met, I felt like we could actually make a clearer plan about actually what do I want to focus on?
Where do I want to go, and how can I make my offer and, you know, what I want to give clients, what I want to give fellow counsellor is much clearer? Yeah. Because I just had and my website was quite messy. I mean, it still is a little bit because there’s lots of things on, but kind of just trying to trying to make that make that clearer, make me feel more confident about what I was offering, really.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. I mean, I’m just gonna circle back a little bit before we move on because I think there’s this great misconception that a lot of people have that if you’re working with LGBTQ people, it’s just gonna be about LGBTQ issues. You know, sort of like coming out or, I don’t know, what other people what people think might be the problems of the LGBT community. But the fact is, when you’re working with LGBTQ people, you’re working with a whole range of issues, aren’t you?
It’s not just about being LGBTQ.
Chloe Foster
Yeah. Absolutely. And should I say a little bit more about that then?
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. Go on.
Chloe Foster
Yeah. So I think that might be something that my counsellor friends maybe thought too. And maybe they thought and some people, I think, when they’re worried about a niche, might get a bit boring talking about the same thing. I think if I was only talking about coming out all the time, then of course anything is going to get dull. Although it would be different for different people.
I certainly don’t just work with coming out. So when clients come to me, I have usually, it’s because they want to work with someone who’s also queer and who also has lots of experience working with queer clients. And sometimes I have clients that come in to me specifically because they really want to focus on coming to terms with their gender or their sexuality. And we dive deep into that, and that is, like, the main focus right from the start. And that kind of continues to be that.
For other people, lots and lots of other people, they just want to make sure that they are not going to be misunderstood and they want to be accepted. And they want to make sure that they work with a counsellor who gets it. So for example, they might have a same sex partner and they might want to mention them every so often, but the actual thing that they’re coming from might be a bereavement or it might be work stress for example. But they don’t want to worry about the fact of what if I mentioned that or what if I mentioned the fact that I’m trans or what if it what if my counsellor thinks I might be trans when I, you know, when join on video call and what if I feel like I need to explain that?
And also I think what’s really important to think about is people talk about the trans broken arm, I think is the phrase. Oh yeah. The trans broken
Josephine Hughes
arm syndrome.
Chloe Foster
Yeah. Yeah. That syndrome. So it’s like that sometimes I’ve heard clients say that, you know, they go to a counsellor and they’re trans and then the counsellor automatically thinks that the reason that they’re coming to counselling is about their gender and that everything’s going to stem back to their gender. Sometimes, yes, of course it’s part of the picture, but it’s not it’s not almost always not the direct reason.
It’s actually usually the society around us that we’re working in and that that’s what makes it really difficult to be trans. And that’s the challenge that is really important that their counsellor gets, which is part of everything else they’re talking about.
Josephine Hughes
Because I think there’s this huge sort of misunderstanding, I think, about the transgender community that somehow it’s a problem. Whereas in actual fact, when trans people are out and they’re living as their true selves, they’re actually really you know, that’s not the problem at all, is it? Just to just to touch on that really. And I think I mean, one of the things that we’ve sort of, you know, really bonded over, isn’t it, is that that some of your work actually has been about educating, counsellors and therapists on this whole the importance of pronouns and that was a big part of your work sort of back in the early days, wasn’t it? Working on helping people to understand the importance of pronouns.
Chloe Foster
Yeah. That actually was a big, big part of my work. I was really I was really trying to shout from the rooftops and and do lots of training, do sorts of really introductory basic trainings that were attracting lot like big audiences, lots of people rather than having long and complicated courses, which of course are great, but they’re not going to attract client, sorry, counsellors who are maybe unsure and a bit scared to ask these questions and don’t really know whether they’re really eligible or want to kind of do a longer training. So I was trying to offer something that was really accessible to get people thinking about the basics and thinking about their own gender and thinking about their own privileges. And one of the big things I was trying to put out there is what about asking our clients their pronouns?
Do we ask our clients their pronouns? And if you don’t, why not? Why not? And I remember, often in my trainings sharing examples of how a counsellor friend of mine had told me that they had started working with a client who was trans and they checked with them what their pronouns were at the beginning and then carried on. And I was like, okay, that’s interesting and great.
But do you ask your other clients their pronouns? Oh, no, no. And I was like, why? Why not? Because we don’t know, do we?
We don’t know until we check. So this is something that I think is a really helpful thing to do. I find helping clients, counsellors to think about why we are asking our clients pronouns and or why we are not asking our clients their pronouns? And also if we don’t know our clients pronouns, what pronouns are we using in supervision? Because I’d often get that answer back from counsellors. I don’t need to know their pronouns.
I’m not talking in 3rd person. I would never need to use their pronouns. But we are in supervision. And then I think some counsellors maybe thought, the client can’t hear me. Big mistake.
Because of course as you and I both know and lots of people listening know that it’s so important to get people’s pronouns right and names whether they’re trans or not. Yeah. If they’re in the room or not in the room. So I can hear myself really getting fired up when I have to talk about that. But I think that things have really shifted big time in the last few years.
And I like to think that I’ve been a part of that journey and seeing, especially in the counselling community, seeing that it’s way more common for counsellors to have their pronouns on their zoom names and on their email signature. When I first started doing that kind of advocacy work, it was mostly just queer counsellors who were putting their pronouns on their email signatures. And now loads of cis counsellors are, in fact, it’s probably more than 50%. I’m seeing when I go into trainings and I’m like, wow, look at all of these people putting their pronouns out. Not saying that they have to put their pronouns out because making it kind of, making it mandatory is not great either.
So it’s just kind of thinking about whether or not you would want to. And if you have that privilege, why not?
Josephine Hughes
I think what you said is so important though about the the idea of, you know, not misgendering people in in supervision because, I mean, you know, as as as a mum of of trans daughters, as you know, that was that was actually a big step for me in acknowledging and accepting who they were, was not to misgender them. And even if I’m like, because obviously I still make mistakes with misgendering them, it just sometimes, especially when I’m talking about them when they were little, I’ll revert to their original pronouns. And I always correct myself now because it feels like that is ultimately, it’s about respect, isn’t it? It’s about respecting somebody’s understanding and identity and that is important. And I think as well, it actually trains your brain too.
That if we call them something wrong in supervision, then it might mean, there’s something going on for us there, and I think that’s a really important thing to actually investigate, isn’t it? I think I mean, I’m sure I’m preaching to the converted here, but I think so many of us have got internalised transphobia without even realising. It’s really important to think about. And I think especially if you’re working well, I mean, I was gonna say, especially if you’re working with the LGBT community, but often you don’t know that you are, do you?
And you don’t know who you might know, you might be talking to a client, and they might have a transgender person in their lives.
Chloe Foster
Or they might be trans themselves, and they just haven’t told you yet. Or maybe they’ll never tell you. I have so many clients that come to me and I say, have you had counselling before? And they’re like, yes, but I wasn’t able to talk about gender. It didn’t feel, it didn’t feel possible.
It didn’t feel like maybe they only had 6 sessions or maybe the counsellor that they were working with, they just weren’t sure. There was nothing on their profiles or anything in the information about the fact that they might get it. So they just tried to avoid mentioning it. Yeah. And thinking about something else because it just felt too vulnerable.
And that’s really sad really. So I would encourage counsellors listening to this, if you do feel comfortable and get it, hopefully, and you’re, you know, you’re very accepting of trans people. Tell your clients, tell them in your publicity. Make sure that that’s really clear because you could be attracting clients that are wanting to talk about these things, but they’re too scared.
They just don’t know and there’s not really enough of us out there that are talking about it and being open about the fact that we are as or trying to be a safer place as possible.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. I agree. And I think the thing to remember as well is that when you look at the number of people, sort of like Gen Z, you know, the younger people who are identifying as, you know, somewhere within, sort of, on the rainbow spectrum, that’s a really high proportion of young people now. I think it’s something like 48 percent even, you know, it’s up to half of them have. It’s just part of the culture now isn’t it?
Despite people trying to stamp on it and stamp it out, that is their generation. And those are often the people who also feel comfortable about kind of counselling. I think so people of my generation and older are a bit sort of, you know, not sure I need therapy. But younger people, it’s just like, yeah, have some counselling. I think they’re very much more open to it.
And I think, you know, from a marketing perspective, it’s actually a really good move. Do you ever get people, you know, during the training who said, oh, I’m worried about, you know, putting people off if I give my pronouns or ask them their pronouns? Was that something that, you know, you used to talk about?
Chloe Foster
Yes. Definitely. That came up. Some people would say things like, what if people don’t understand what a pronoun is? And I remember a long time ago, me thinking that too and thinking, oh, what’s a pronoun?
Kind of going back to English and thinking, oh, what’s a verb? What’s a noun? All these, all these words. I don’t know what they, you know, and, and for some people that will be the case that they might not remember what it is. And I’d have when I’ve asked people to thinking about whether or not they want to share their pronouns, you know, on their badge, for example, if they’ve been in person training, that some people, if they haven’t been clear in the early days of what that was and what that means, before we started the training, I did have people writing Mrs and just being confused and thinking it meant title.
I think, oh, that’s so interesting. That’s really helpful to know that that’s kind of Yeah, there’s been some confusion there. So then I started being much more clear and kind of explaining before they even wrote on the badges and also making it optional. Yeah.
Josephine Hughes
That’s really interesting, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s that sort of understanding of what it means. Yeah. Yeah.
Chloe Foster
Some people were scared to ask some people were scared to ask their clients about pronouns because they were like, well, I work with the generic population. So there’s such a tiny number of people that it would affect. So it just seems a bit of a strange question to ask. I don’t want to make the client uncomfortable.
So then I’m thinking, okay, that’s interesting. Because then we’re putting the people who are in the privileged position, who have what I would say is called pronoun privilege, where their pronouns match how they look and sound and they’re usually cisgender. So most of us would be in that place. And then our clients would be those clients who are privileged. So they’re not how are they going to feel uncomfortable?
They’re going to feel uncomfortable because there’s some transphobia or some kind of intolerance going on there. And actually asking them is helping break that down. And it’s way more common in young people like you were saying before about Gen z, it’s way more common in young people’s services to kinda be automatically asking pronouns. And Yeah. And cis and trans clients are, like, totally fine with answering that.
But in our counselling world, as those people are growing up and to adults, that’s only gonna become more and more important. Anyway, I could go on about this for days. So what’s your next question?
Josephine Hughes
So that was something that you sort of moved into sort of training counsellors in, wasn’t it? So I think if we just wind back a little bit as well, because part of the problem, I think, is that you had initially well, not a problem, but I think one of the issues was that you needed to make space for actually being able to fit in developing this side of your business. And so one of the first things, piece of work we did together was actually thinking about your pricing, wasn’t it? Because tell us how many clients would you see in a week? What’s full for you in terms of your client numbers?
Chloe Foster
What now or in the early days or both?
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. I mean, do both.
Chloe Foster
So when I first contacted you, I was I don’t know. I was probably seeing, at a max, probably something like 16. For me, that felt really big. I know lots of people listening might feel like that’s totally fine, but for me that was like, phew, that’s a lot of people to hold.
Seeing them every single week. And what I was, what you really helped me to do is to work out, look, where am I, what times am I seeing these people? And they were a little bit scattered really because I had started working online and I also had my own room. Therefore, I didn’t have the restrictions of when to book people in so I could be more flexible, but maybe too flexible. So it was becoming really tiring, kind of having people sort of all over the place in my diary.
I was strict in boundaries in the sense of not doing weekends, but I did lots of evenings. And that was horrible, really. It was just, it was so tiring, so difficult to keep up with. So working together with you and thinking about, you know, how many clients do I currently see and how many do I want to see? And it was so clear.
And I mean, it’s obvious now as I think about it, but you helped me to realise that the biggest thing I need to change is my pricing. Because in order to see less people, I’m going to need to put my prices up. Now, back in those days, I was quite notorious for doing lots of concessions, having sliding scales. That was very complicated as well. Free initial sessions, which all those things are for some people might work well.
And I know there’s always debates about those things. But for me, it got to the point where actually this is really hard. Like I am working with so many people, so much high risk. And I’m really, at the end of the day, my salary is so little.
By the time you think about all the other overheads you’ve got to cover, you know, it’s you think, oh, this is a lot per hour, but it’s not. It’s not really. So now I’ve got a very small number of clients. I would probably work with a maximum of 6.
And that is because I’m working a 4 day week and have a huge amount of space that I’m putting into my other training, the email counselling training work, which I know you’re gonna we’re gonna talk about later. I’ve reduced my client load down and I’m also gonna be doing supervision and other things as well. So I’m trying to keep it lower. For that reason.
But it had been reducing and reducing because I was able to put my fees up and have more space for other things.
Josephine Hughes
When you’re in demand, you can begin to charge more because you know that there’s gonna be people who will really, really want to work with you. And I think because you have such a clear niche, you knew who your clients were and you did have people who wanted to work with you. That does enable you to pull up your prices. But how did it feel for you when you first sort of started thinking about, oh, I’m gonna raise because we did raise them quite a lot, didn’t we? It might have been 2 or 3 goes, but, you know, you got to quite a high level, didn’t you, in terms of your prices?
So how was it for you sort of like that? What – can I raise my prices?
Chloe Foster
It was so scary. I’m gonna be real here. And I remember when we first talked about it and you were really confident and like, yeah, it’s gonna, you know, this is going fine, this makes sense. Because I was telling you, you know, I’ve got people waiting. I keep getting, counsellors are referring to me.
I’m getting more and more clients, more and more clients are wanting to work with me, but I can’t fit them in and I don’t wanna keep squeezing them in, you know, with a waiting list and having to turn people away. And then for you to say, why don’t you put your prices up? And actually my supervisor is saying the same
Josephine Hughes
It’s like, okay.
Chloe Foster
Yes. Maybe I need to be doing this. My prices were really low. And then I was like, oh, I could pick it up a little bit. And I had to do it in stages.
I mean, I think that’s ethical too, but I had to for me, for me to feel confident and comfortable with that. There’s no point in just, you know, whacking on a number. And because if you don’t feel right with it, it’s gonna affect the work. Yeah.
Josephine Hughes
And I think it actually affects your ability to be able to recruit people as well. Yeah. You just don’t have that belief that people don’t work with you at that price.
Chloe Foster
You think you’re not gonna get anybody and therefore you probably won’t because it all feels really awkward. You’re like, oh god, I’m not worth that. Yeah. But so slowly putting it up little by little and slowly, and then for new people, and that’s a whole other complicated issue I worked on with my supervisor around what to do with current clients and how to kind of very slowly rise their prices. But over time, you know, people don’t stay forever.
They leave and then you have new people coming through and then it gets easier because then people are starting at the newer rates. And I feel now, after all the work that we’ve done together, really comfortable and confident talking about pricing, which I never ever thought I would get to that stage. Like, that would be the last thing I think with having coaching I would have thought that I would be more confident on. Yeah. And I think that I would love to, like, talk about that with supervisees and things.
I think it feels like a really important part of our job.
Josephine Hughes
And I think we. I just think it’s traditional in the counselling world that we don’t charge a lot. We tend to under, I mean, I could start talking about this forever, so let’s move on. Because I think the thing is with the pricing, that freed up a lot of time for you. Mhmm. And then the other way that you’ve sort of been working is with your email counselling because that frees up time for you in another sort of way.
And I think people would be really curious to find out what is email counselling and how do you do it.
Chloe Foster
So yeah. Well, firstly, email counselling does free up my time well, it doesn’t free up. It gives me flexibility. So because of the way that email counselling works, I don’t have to have set session times when I, when I work with email clients.
And, and that has given me so much flexibility in my working week to be able to develop other things. And it’s also something that not many counsellors are able to offer. So, you know, lots of clients are wanting it because they don’t because there’s very few places to go for it. So what email counselling is, is it’s basically a secure, confidential therapeutic email exchange with a qualified counsellor.
That’s it in a nutshell. It’s very different from traditional counselling, in person or even on video call, which is quite similar to in person, in the fact that we can’t see or hear each other. That is a huge difference. t’s all text based, of course.
It’s emails. It’s written. And it’s asynchronous, so you’re not meeting in the moment. So you haven’t got that dialogue backwards and forwards. You’ve got the email that they send and then my reply.
Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s not like we just sort of randomly send emails. And I think that sometimes when people hear, sometimes when counsellors particularly hear about email counselling, they might assume, oh, that sounds a bit messy, a bit unboundaried. I don’t know if I could do that. And then some people who might sort of unethically try and do it with clients without having done any training and get them into some very choppy waters. Because it can get very messy if you’ve not really thought through the boundaries. The boundaries are really important. So what I mean by that is I teach the students that come on my courses the importance of having a word limit.
So or else the clients could just literally write you pages and pages, could write a whole book if they wanted. Or they could write several emails to you, and it’s like that’s gonna be unmanageable.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. Because you’ve got to read it. Yeah. Let me just get this straight. So they would send you an email, and you would spend time reading it. And that time you spend reading it is part of their sort of therapeutic hour.
Is that correct?
Chloe Foster
So basically, they sent me an email with a word limit on a set day that we agreed on. Set day and time, there’s sort of like a deadline. I might not use that word, but that’s what they send it by. So they’ve got a time that they send it by. And then once I’ve received it, I put some time in my diary to read, draft and send and and write to write a reply.
And that process from when they send their email to me sending my reply is 2 working days later. Because it’s really important the way that email counselling works is that there is space between it, that they’re they’ve sent their words, and then I’ve got that space to to look at it and reflect on that and then have a quick check of it just before I send it.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah.Because I imagine that the difficult thing is often if something’s text based is the ease with which misunderstandings can happen. Do do you find that comes up or do you find because you’ve got that reflection time
Chloe Foster
Not as often with clients as you would think, but it is something that counsellors, fellow counsellors do worry about. They think that, well, if I can’t see them then there’s going to be misunderstandings, it’s going to be ruptures. But yes, of course it can happen. We can misunderstand each other around the tone. And I think it’s really important to that’s why I think training is really important because if we’re just randomly sending emails to our clients and not thinking about how we might do that and how we might work on the text, the thing that we’re writing back to them in a way that’s gonna be very clear and is gonna try to avoid misunderstandings and be be aware of the fact that there might be something like saying something like, for example, I’m not sure if this makes sense or maybe you might disagree.
Like, kind of putting words in like that, for example. That would be kind of one of my things that I might teach people to kind of think about how they minimise misunderstandings.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. Yeah. Sort of making it conditional in a sense. This may be or it may not be, but just sort of giving people that room
Chloe Foster
Which I do already. I do it already when I’m working with clients via video call. Maybe that’s just a habit, but I feel like that’s really helpful. I might think to myself, I’ve got something really challenging we’re gonna say in a video call. And definitely, if it was in an email, I’d be like, oh, this is coming to my mind and this kind of comes up with people when I think about this. And I don’t know if it really applies to you.
Might not at all. And then sometimes they’re like, oh, absolutely. And other times they’re like, oh, no. No. No.
And then they can’t say no because you haven’t kind of put it on like, this is my situation and this is what I think. So I think it’s a really good practice to have in all of our counselling work really. And I found that technique to work really well.
Josephine Hughes
You know, you mentioned that you, you actually offer this email counselling training. And we’ll talk a little bit more about it in a minute. But what gave you the idea to develop this? Because you’re working sort of, like, with LGBTQ people, the pronouns work, and then you sort of, like, use email counselling.
Tell me a bit more about how you thought of it.
Chloe Foster
Oh, that’s a good, great question because it’s quite a pivot, isn’t it? Well, I had been working loads with clients, queer clients by using email counselling and it’s working really, really well. I was really enjoying it, really enjoying that freedom of flexibility it was giving me and giving my clients. And I think it’s one of the things that came up in our coaching work we did together really.
But I I looked at it and then I and then I kind of came back to it later on, later down the line.
Josephine Hughes
You had a blog, didn’t you, about email counselling? Because you did it for your clients so your clients would know about it. And then every now and then I started referring people, well, go and look at Chloe’s blog on email counselling. And then in the end, I sort of said to you, Chloe, have you thought about sort of making this into a book or something?
Chloe Foster
Oh there was something around that, wasn’t there? And I was like, a book? Like, I wrote a book.
Josephine Hughes
Tell us about your book.
Chloe Foster
So that was really scary. And I was like, oh, I don’t know, have I got enough to say? And you were like, you’ve got lots to say. I think, how many years you’ve been doing this. How many clients have you worked with? How many counsellors that have approached you about this?
And I was like, well, maybe. I don’t know what I suppose. I think it was just the word book that felt really scary. Like blogs are okay. I was like, yeah, I can put blogs out.
And I was like, actually, you know, I’ve probably got so many things I could write about in blogs. Maybe it would be clearer and nicer to put it together into a book. So I did bring in that task and oh, but then I kept kind of it took me a while to write because I kept, I think I was scared of launching it. I was scared of putting it out there and like, oh, who will buy it and what if people think it’s rubbish and that kind of it was the confidence to actually start writing it was hard enough but then the confidence to to launch it was scary.
But then I did launch it. Sorry. Go on.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. I was gonna say, it is hard, isn’t it? All those different stages. And it actually doesn’t get any easier, does it? You still like you said, it was fearful to start it and you still feel fear to actually launch it.
And then what happened when you did launch it?
Chloe Foster
Well then people read it and people got in touch with me and kept saying how can I learn more? Yeah. Where can I go for training? Because people were like this sounds great, I want, you know, I want to work with clients and I want to know more, but this, you know, the ebook is a taster. It’s not, it’s not teaching people everything about what they need to know.
It was me sharing my experiences and my sort of stuff about how email counselling works, but it’s, but it’s not a training and people were like, I want, I want to do a training in this. Where can I go? And I was like, thinking well there isn’t really anywhere. Like there’s, there’s, there’s a few places that offer online, yeah, generic online training and and most of those that have been sort of around since pre pandemic do teach a little bit about email counselling, but it’s usually as a sort of an add on. And the video counselling is like the main thing.
And there wasn’t anything that was and and to my knowledge still isn’t anything that’s specifically aimed at email counselling. And at this stage, you know, everyone was working on video call anyways. Like, I don’t wanna do a generic online course. I don’t need it. I want to learn about this text based stuff, about email counselling specifically. So we talked again and, you were like, why don’t you do a course yourself?
You know? And I was like, oh.
And then I was like, well, that sounds that feels really, I put myself out, that’s really scary to do. But you reminded me, which I needed reminding I think at that point, that I had, you know, I had done lots of training. I’ve been doing it for years already. All of the LGBTQ stuff.
I’d already been working with counsellors and all of the stuff that we’ve been speaking about. I’ve done loads of trainings. I’ve done teaching and training in most of most of my jobs pre being a counsellor. It’s something that I actually love doing. But there was something about that I feel like, oh, that’s a big step.
Because it’s something new and nobody’s nobody’s doing it. And I think you were like, I think you said something like, yeah, but that’s the very reason to do it if nobody’s doing it. People are needing it. People want it. And you love doing it.
So why not offer that? So I put something together, a short course and I got a live course where people come along and it was so popular and it sold out so quickly. And it went really well. I absolutely loved doing it and got brilliant feedback. So I ran it again, but then it sold out again.
And then I was getting more and more people joining my waiting list, waiting for the next time I was going to run the live course. And I was like, oh, I can’t keep up with this. How often am I going to do it? And also, is it going to get boring for me to keep teaching the same thing? I thought this isn’t gonna work.
I’m not gonna be able to reach as many people as I want to. So that’s when I started to think about recorded training and sort of that people can access on their own self paced type training. And that’s what I’ve been developing more recently. And I’m really excited to be doing my first official launch in the autumn of 2024.
But I’ve been doing loads of tests, beta tests and pilots with counsellors over the last year or so.
We’ve done the live trainings. You know what works and yeah. But also the recorded course has gone out to a small number of counsellors who tested it and tried it. And I’ve made so many changes. So it’s been a huge process and I’m still kind of in that.
I’ve kind of developing it and making it better. But, you know, my hope is that this will mean that I can reach more counsellors and in turn reach more clients. Because I can’t work with everyone who wants, all clients who want email counselling. You know, even if I was working with a huge number of clients. So more counsellors being trained, more clients will be able to access.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. Yeah.
Chloe Foster
So it feels exciting.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah. Yeah. Really exciting. I can imagine in this day and age as well, that that sort of ability, the flexibility for people just to be able to email in their own time.
And also for people who perhaps, you know, in some ways find it easier to maybe, you know, write things down and think about things that way rather than being in the moment where they have to suddenly start talking about something that maybe are quite difficult for them. That somehow being able to write it down and send it, it sort of introduces sort of something there’s something around it that feels as though it might be safer for people in some ways, or particular types of people might find it a safer way of working.
Chloe Foster
Yeah. Definitely. I’ve worked with so many clients who may work by email counselling who may never have had counselling if that hadn’t been an option. They’ve either been too embarrassed, too nervous, and they might never have got to what they really want to talk about. You know, the kind of, if you think about the door handle moment, and the people kind of bringing something up in the last few minutes of a session.
With email counselling, it’s much more common for clients to be able to actually address in their whole session what do they want to talk about and not kind of being around the bush and just being like, oh, talking about lots of other things and how was my day and then just like finally getting to the this is the crux of what I need to support with. Yeah. Because it feels there’s this inhibition that is slower. They feel less less scared, more comfortable and because they’re kind of writing it down. They can think about it.
They can see it written before they decide to click send. Or they can delete it and think, okay maybe I’ll say that next week. They don’t have to. But once it’s out, when you’ve said it out loud, it’s out. So I think that that is really helpful for clients, but it’s also helpful for us as counsellors.
Because there’s so many times and people listening might feel the same. Where, you know, if I work with clients, like a video call or in person, I’m thinking to myself, oh, I want to say something, but I’m not quite sure if I’m ready. I’m trying to process it in my head, but I’m also trying to listen to what they’re saying. And also sometimes, just mid sentence, I’m just like, what was the word I was gonna say? And that’s really scary.
And I can’t think of the word I just say to clients, I’m like, what’s the word? And it’s just annoying because it just, like, uses up time. But it’s just like when you’re, you know, your head just freezes. But when you’re working with email counselling, as a counsellor, you can really think and process and, you know, get and and and just sort of have that pause, have that silence where you’re not having to continue listening to what they’re saying, plus kinda working out what you might wanna say, which is really, really difficult.
Josephine Hughes
It works both ways, I think, for the clients and for us. Yeah. So we can expect your email counselling training to be out in the autumn, can we?
Chloe Foster
Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
Josephine Hughes
And how can people find out more about it? Because I’m sure people listening will want to know more about it.
Chloe Foster
So I’ve got a brand new website because I used to have it just as, like, a tab on my original website, and that was getting messy and confusing. So I’ve set up a brand new website, email counselling academy.com. So it’s very clear because it’s based and aimed at counsellors. So on that website, you’ll find more information about the courses I offer and how to get in touch and how to sign up. So there’s a waiting list on there at the moment. So if you’re interested in being alerted when the spaces get released in the autumn, then the best thing to do is to pop your name on there. And I will let you know.
Josephine Hughes
I’ll pop the link into the show notes as well. So Chloe, thanks so much for coming on the interview and telling us all about all the things we’ve talked about. I’m sure people will have been really interested to learn a bit more about the whole thing about pronouns and also just opening up their minds in terms of how they could develop a different way of counselling people and perhaps bring that flexibility that might suit both them and their clients. And I do know people who’ve worked with Chloe and have given me great feedback about their counselling email counselling training. And I’m sure that if you did decide to work with Chloe, either in supervision or with their email counselling counselling training, that you’d really benefit from it.
And Chloe, it’s always, always, always a pleasure to see you. You are so great at just implementing stuff, and I think you’ve been really courageous. And I think this is why, you know, you are where you are today. And I think this is just the start. I think we’re gonna see you going on and do more.
Chloe Foster
Wow. Thank you, Josephine.
And, you know, you have helped me a lot along the way. And I know I’ve said this to you many, many times, but, you know, it’s, I think that having people around you to support you, you know, having coaching, having supervisors, having colleagues, we can’t do it on our own. And, you know, that’s so great. It’s so lovely. And, yeah, I really appreciate all the support you’ve done along the way, along the years.
Josephine Hughes
As I say, it’s been an absolute pleasure, and I just love watching my coachees just sort of just go
Chloe Foster
and take the next scary step.
I’m just like, oh, is there surely there can’t be something else even more scary. I just start to settle and then I’m like “ooh”, and then I get an idea and then you’re like, go for it, I’m like, oh, and then I know I always end up doing it. Why? Why? And then I’m fine.
So people listening, I just hope that you can find that courage within you. I know that’s what you’re all about, Josephine, but that’s so lovely I think to see fellow counsellors taking that time, taking those scary steps.
Josephine Hughes
Yeah.
Chloe Foster
Because it’s not actually that scary once you do it. I mean, that’s always the famous quote, isn’t it? That you can do it.
Josephine Hughes
It feels really scary, but the scariness never really goes away, but you just sort of
Chloe Foster
It’s still scary, but it’s just a bit more of, like, oh, I’m doing it.
Josephine Hughes
But I think and I think the other thing, just to say in closing, is I think it’s really lovely to see a counsellor developing this side of their work because I think, you know, coaches it’s it’s a bit like you said, you could see prior to the pandemic this huge possibility of online training, and coaches could see it at that point. And I was involved with coaches, that’s how I started. And the coaching community is doing this, and the counselling community haven’t been doing it. And I think pre-pandemic, we’re beginning to catch up now, and I really want to see more counsellors doing this because I think we have got so much to offer. We’ve got that depth of experience of working with people therapeutically.
Coaches are slightly different. They do have a different line of work, but I think we’ve got so much that we can offer you know, people in terms of that sort of therapeutic knowledge and the depth of what we have to do. And I think it’s a shame that we’re just letting coaches take up that space because I think we need to claim that space for counsellors as well. That’s my little sermon for the day.
Chloe Foster
I absolutely agree with you. And I’ll just squeeze in this bit. I don’t know if it’s helpful to use. Just to say that, you know, I think that counsellors sadly can be scared of change, which is a bit ironic really, because that’s kind of what we’re all about.
And, there’s so many counsellors that are fearful to try something new. And that pre-pandemic, there were so many counsellors that were like, I don’t I would never go on video call. No way. That’s not the real thing and that’s not gonna work. And it was quite stigmatised in the community.
And then what I say to people is look how that shifted and look how now everybody, I mean it’s very very unusual to find a counsellor who doesn’t work on video call or at least offer it as an option. Right? And I always say I really hope it doesn’t take a pandemic for email counselling to also surge and become bigger. Because it did overnight with video call, and it will with email counselling. It certainly will.
But it will, it will take a little bit of time, I think, for that stigma to reduce – the kind of wondering and questioning and this fear of change in the counselling community. With clients, it’s already there. Clients are like, yeah, give me something that’s really accessible that I don’t have to worry about setting a set time and oh, I can write, great. And that’s going to grow that kind of, that need in the counsellors, in the clients sorry. But counsellors, we need to listen to that and be more ready for it.
Like how can we make our spaces more accessible, more flexible for both clients and for us.
Josephine Hughes
Brilliant. Oh, thank you, that is such a brilliant, brilliant ending. Thank you. So we’ll finish there.
Thank you, Chloe
Chloe Foster
Thank you.
Josephine Hughes
Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you.
Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community, Good Enough Counsellors. And for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please visit my website, Josephinehughes.com.
If you found this episode helpful, I’d love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist, or leave a review on your podcast app. And in closing, I’d love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe you can do it.