Why Experienced Counsellors Forget How Much They Know

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I think there's something else going on here too. I think many counselors are underestimating the value of what they know because they've simply forgotten what it felt like not to know it. And what if things you've stopped noticing are actually some of the most valuable things that you know?

Hi, I'm Jane Travis, and this is the Grow Your Private Practice show, the place for counselors who want to grow a thriving, ethical, and sustainable business without selling out or giving up. So if you're looking for encouragement, practical ideas, and the occasional permission slip, well, you're in the right place.

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So let me explain a little bit. Back then, every podcast seemed to contain a new idea. Every book introduced a concept I'd never heard of before. Every training course felt like a door opening into a new room that I didn't even know existed. So it was exciting. You know, there was always a new strategy, another approach, or another way of thinking about things that I just really wanted to understand, and I was like a dry sponge with all this knowledge.

Like I say, it really was exciting, and at times it was slightly intimidating, too. But mostly it felt like a world of possibilities has opened up in front of me. But this course felt a little bit different. As the training went on, I kept finding myself thinking, "Do you know what? I think I've heard that before."

And then a little bit later, "I already know that, actually." And then, "Actually, do you know what? I don't only know this, I'm already doing this." So at first, I kind of assumed that this was a reflection of the training that I took, but it took me a little while to realize that actually it wasn't. What I was noticing was how much that I'd learned, how much that I'd moved forward So without really paying attention, I'd spent years reading and listening and experimenting, making mistakes and figuring things out, you know?

And the things that had once felt really complicated had gradually become a lot more familiar to me. So the ideas that once felt exciting and new had actually just become a part of the way that I thought. And because they felt so familiar, I'd stopped actually noticing them. And I wonder if you've ever had a similar experience.

Perhaps you've been to a workshop or listened to a podcast or read a book and realized that much of it just wasn't really new to you anymore. Not because you've reached the end of your learning journey, 'cause come on, none of us ever do that, but because things that once felt new have gradually become just a part of who you are, and that's the thing about knowledge and expertise.

It rarely arrives with a fanfare. So have, have you ever watched The Matrix? I mean, it's quite old now, actually. I'm showing my age, probably. But The Matrix, if you haven't seen it, it's very good. but anyway, in The Matrix there's the character Neo, and this thing happens where he closes his eyes and he gets, like, downloaded a program of a thing.

So it might be of, I don't know, flying a helicopter. Sorry, am I boring you now? But there'd be a moment where he'd open his eyes and go, "I know helicopters," and he'd just know everything in the world that there was to do with that thing. So I'm saying that because I really... I'm trying to demonstrate the fact that there isn't a point where you open your eyes and go, "I know counseling."

I hope that makes a little bit of sense. So instead, the things that you once had to think really hard about become the things that you do automatically. You know, the concepts that once felt really complicated, they've now become quite familiar, and the ideas that once felt really exciting, well, they've now been woven into your everyday thinking, and because they've become familiar, it's easy to stop noticing them altogether And I can remember this from my own counseling training too.

After I'd done my main qualification, I did some further training in transactional analysis, and one of the things that had the biggest impact on me was... Well, I used to go to the Berne Institute in Nottingham. Let me know if you've ever been there. And back in the day, I was really blessed because I had Ian Stewart, who wrote a couple of the main TA books, and also Adrienne Lee.

Now, Adrienne Lee was an amazing woman. She uses stories constantly. So she doesn't use stories for the sake of it, but these stories would make an idea click. And more than 15 years later, I can still remember sitting there and having one light bulb moment after another. So things that I'd never really understood before suddenly made sense to me. You know, patterns that I'd noticed in myself, in my life, they started to have names. You know, relationships started to look different.

People started to look different, and I started to look different. Now, at the time, all of those ideas felt huge, just huge, absolutely life-changing. They weren't simply interesting theories that helped me pass a course. They genuinely changed the way that I understood myself and the people around me. And some of them helped me to make sense of the experiences that I'd struggled to understand for years. So if you've done counseling training yourself, and if you're listening to this, you probably have, then I think you'll probably recognize that feeling. You know, do you remember how much some of those ideas affected you when you first came across them?

Do you remember ever leaving a training day with your head buzzing because something had suddenly clicked into place? Or do you remember seeing your clients or your family or yourself through a completely different lens? Because those moments really matter. But the trouble is that over time they become absorbed into the person that we are now.

What once felt astonishing gradually starts to feel a little bit more obvious, and what once felt totally profound becomes a part of our everyday thinking. So today, many of those same ideas feel completely natural to me. You know, they've just become part of the lens through which I see the world, and that is where the problem begins. Now, I think one of the reasons counselors underestimate the value of what they know is that we tend to judge our knowledge by how it feels to us now rather than by what it took us to get that knowledge in the first place.

So we stop seeing the years of training, the years of reading and reflection, the years of supervision, and the years of client work, and we stop seeing those light bulb moments and the difficult conversations and the gradual accumulation of any experience. And instead, we only see and recognize the end result.

We see an idea that feels straightforward to us now. You know, we see a concept that makes sense to us now, and we see something that we can explain relatively easier now. And because it feels straightforward now, we forget about the work that we've put in, and we assume that it must have always been this straightforward.

But those are two very, very different things, because something can feel simple and still be incredibly valuable. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that some of the most useful ideas are the really simple ones. Not because they lack depth, but because they can be understood so thoroughly and that they can be explained so clearly, and that's really very different from being basic.

But the danger is that that familiarity starts to disguise the value. So the more familiar something becomes, the less remarkable it feels to you. The less remarkable it feels, the easier it is to assume that everybody else already knows this too. But, and this is the important thing, that is rarely true, and I see evidence of this outside of work all the time. So every now and then I'll be chatting to somebody socially, and they'll mention that they've been to counseling at some point, and usually, thankfully, they'll tell me that it's really helped them, and they'll share something that they might have learnt along the way.

Now, it might be the, a new understanding of something like boundaries, or it might be recognizing a pattern that they've been repeating for years, or it might be the realization that they're allowed to have needs too, or that they're not responsible for everybody else's feelings. And as they're talking, it's obvious how important that insight was to them.

You can hear it in the way they describe it, in the tone of voice. It wasn't simply an interesting idea. It's changed them. It's changed something within them, and it's helped them to understand themselves differently or make a decision they've been struggling with for years. But what I find fascinating is the contrast between their experience of that idea and mine, because they're describing a moment that felt absolutely transformative, something they still remember years later because it shifted the way they saw themselves or the world around them.

But meanwhile, I'm sitting there realizing that I haven't consciously thought about that particular idea for years. Not because it's not an interesting idea or an important idea. You know, I'm not that sort of a genius, you know if only. Quite the opposite. It's because it's something that's become so deeply woven into the way that I am now that I no longer experience it as an insight at all.

It just feels less like something I've learned and more like something I've, I've already known. Now, of course, that's not true. There was a time when it was an idea that was absolutely new to me too, and I had to go through the process and learn about it and change and all the rest of it. So, but there was a time when it made me stop and think.

There was a time when it changed the way I understood myself, people, and relationships. But familiarity has a really funny way of hiding that from us. Something can feel completely familiar to the counselor and also completely transformational to the client at exactly the same time, and I think that's the part we can sometimes forget. So why does this even matter? Come on, Jane, why are you banging on about this? Well, you might be wondering why I'm spending so much time talking about this, and the reason is that I think this affects us far more than we realize.

Because when we stop recognizing the value of what we know, it doesn't change how we think about ourselves, but it changes what we share with other people. The ideas that we dismiss are often the very ideas that we stop talking about. So after spending years helping counselors with their websites, with their blogs, with their marketing, I've lost count of the number of times I've seen this happen.

Someone will tell me that they're stuck and they don't know what to say, and then 10 minutes later, they'll explain something about anxiety or shame or grief or relationships in a way that makes complete sense. And they'll describe a pattern that they've noticed over years of working with clients.

They'll share an observation that helps me understand something differently. They'll explain a concept in a way that's clear and practical and genuinely useful. The insight is there. The experience is there. The understanding is there. But what isn't always there is the recognition that this knowledge has value, and that's because the idea feels so familiar it gets dismissed. Because they've talked about it many times before, so it no longer feels interesting, or because they've known about it for years, they kind of assume that everybody else must know about it too.

Yet the people reading their website or reading their blogs or considering whether to contact them aren't seeing it through the eyes of a counselor. They're seeing it through the eyes of someone who's trying to understand themselves. You know, someone who is confused or somebody who is hurting or somebody who's searching for, for language or understanding and hope. And from that perspective, the idea that you've stopped noticing may be exactly the idea that they need to hear And as I've been writing this, I keep coming back to the same question: What have you stopped noticing?

What do you explain so often that it now just feels like common sense to you? What insight changed the way you understood yourself years ago, but now it feels completely ordinary? What is it that you assume everybody knows because you've known it for so long? Because the chances are that somebody doesn't know it. The chances are that somebody is struggling with something that you've spent years helping people to understand.

The chances are that somebody is waiting for the very insight that you've started to take for granted. One of the things I've noticed after years of helping counselors with their websites and blogs and marketing is that the knowledge is usually already there. More often than not, the challenge isn't about learning something completely new.

Sometimes the knowledge that you've stopped noticing is exactly the knowledge somebody else needs to hear

Okay, so that's it for today. But before I go, I want to leave you with a question. What is it that you have stopped noticing? So what idea feels so obvious to you now that you've almost forgotten there was a time when you didn't know it? What do you explain so often that it feels like common sense? Or what insight changed the way you understood yourself, your clients, or the world, but now it feels completely ordinary?

Because there's a very good chance that somebody else still really needs to hear it Now, I know that there are thousands of podcasts that you could be listening to, so the fact that you've chosen to spend part of your day here with me really does mean a lot. So if you've found the podcast at all helpful and you'd like to support it, I've recently set up a Buy Me A Coffee page.

It's completely optional, but if you would like to contribute towards the running of the show and perhaps fund the occasional cappuccino whilst I'm planning future episodes, you'll find a link in the show notes, along with all the other free and paid things that I've got for you. And also, a very big thank you to Christabel for the coffee that you bought me.

It was so kind of you. Thank you so much. So whether you're gonna buy me a coffee or not, thank you very, very much for being here, and I just wanna say keep going, keep sharing what you know, and remember, just because something feels obvious to you doesn't mean it's gonna feel obvious to somebody else. So until the next time, you take care