It’s never too late to start your dream job

After decades as a jet-setting writer, LUCY CAVENDISH, 52, thinks she’s found her true calling... by becoming a counsellor

SIX years ago, I decided to change my career. I didn’t know it at the time, but the decision I made back then to do an introductory course in counselling was to alter the path of my life.

It’s taken all that time to train and ramp up my counselling hours in order to qualify but, this year, finally, I set up my private practice — and, after three decades as a successful journalist, I found myself with my dream career in midlife.

Now, instead of scouring newspapers for story ideas, I read Therapy Today, the counselling industry bible. And, instead of running round the country interviewing people and firing out questions, I sit in my therapy room and listen.

As a journalist, I was noisy, shouty, opinionated and a gossip. Today, I’m far quieter, more thoughtful and measured.

I don’t mind that — in fact, I relish it — but this journey has not been easy. It’s a serious business, counselling, and it has taken me far out of my comfort zone. For years, as a journalist, I knew what to do and how to do it. While training as a therapist, I often wondered if I was an imposter, feeling as though my clients’ welfare rested with me. I was terrified I’d get it ‘wrong’, butt in, be too strident, not empathetic enough, or too driven by the journalistic desire for a neat ending. Now, since settling into my new role, I can honestly say I feel I have the ‘right’ to sit opposite my clients. I love hearing what they want to tell me. I find my work fascinating and deeply moving — but it’s not in any way glitzy.

In my previous life, I’d been a celebrity interviewer and editor of a food magazine. I had been to Bosnia to report on a horse sanctuary just after the war ended. I’d lived in New York, commuted to LA, slept the night in Cher’s house and been on dates with actress Michelle Pfeiffer’s exhusband. I’d travelled all over the world, from Moscow to Mozambique.

Then I’d settled down, had four kids and written about it in a newspaper column. Sometimes, people would stop me in the street to tell me how much they enjoyed my column. I loved that. I felt happy I was making people laugh or cry or marvel at the madness of life in the way I did. But, over the years, I became increasingly disgruntled. My children, who, when younger, had been happy for me to write about them, started to read my column and I could see they were beginning to feel exposed.

By then, I was also appearing on TV. I was getting up at 5am, spending a fortune on clothes and running around here, there and everywhere. I once got driven back from one TV studio to my daughter’s school an hour an a half away to see her do a school reading, then took the car straight back, travelling 85km to a different TV studio to do a news report. While it all sounds glamorous, something wasn’t working. I felt I was skimming the surface, rather than doing anything in-depth. Like many journalists, I was also being trolled online — and discovered I was more thin-skinned than I thought.

It was my husband who suggested I’d make a good counsellor. I’d had therapy myself and felt the benefit of it. I found it interesting, too.

So, tentatively at first, I did an introductory course in integrative counselling, which combines different styles of therapy. That led to a further three years of learning. The training makes you delve into your own issues and childhood traumas. I’ve had to make a rigorous inventory and exploration of my entire life. It was far from easy, and I have regrets, but I’ve now come to terms with the many things I’ve done.

At times, I have found it excruciating, but this process has been life-changing. I’ve learned so much about myself and the human condition.

And, from the off, I enjoyed it. I like to help. I am, as the great psychiatrist Carl Jung said, a ‘wounded healer’.

Journalism and counselling are more closely related than you might think. As an interviewer, I’d ask questions, then sit and listen. The difference now is that I don’t have my editorial hat on. I’m not looking for an ‘angle’.

My day-to-day life has changed enormously. Today, I work from therapy centres and from my home, where I have converted a room. It has a wood-burning stove, candles, blankets and tissues. I spend my hours listening to people’s stories.

I’ve heard things that have rocked me back on my chair.

My clients — adolescents, individual adults and couples — have shared with me their intimate secrets. They have let me into their lives in a way that feels humbling and an honour. So many things come up, from ‘why am I here?’ to ‘why is no one hearing me?’

My job is not just to listen, but to actively listen. I concentrate on the words a client is saying, but also on their physicality. Do they laugh while they are saying painful things? Do they hold eye contact?

THESE small things can be surprisingly revealing. For instance, when clients talk about ‘you’, rather than ‘I’, it implies they are finding it difficult to ‘own’ their feelings. I am also constantly processing, trying to use my training to delve beneath the words, to show empathy, to make gentle interpretations.

Sometimes, I challenge a client. Each day is different. But every day, there are small triumphs, such as a client with an eating disorder who managed to keep some food down, or a couple on the verge of splitting up who might tentatively touch hands.

Sometimes, I want to hug my clients. Sometimes, I want to cry with them. It’s a roller coaster. And the process is difficult and intricate. Perhaps I’ll say the wrong thing, or a client may even storm out. I have to know how to deal with this, how to make amends and to see what affected them this much.

Sometimes, I feel my client and I are just trying to keep our heads above water. Sometimes, we are swimming together. And sometimes, one or both of us might be being dragged under.

But when therapy works, it is magical. It’s hard to explain how I know it is working. It’s when there are shifts, however tiny, in a client’s behaviour or attitude. Often there’s a symbiosis in the room; a deeper understanding.

When I am not seeing clients, I am still writing, but now I write articles and blogs about therapy, rather than celebrity interviews.

I was thrilled when I had my first piece in Therapy Today. It took months to write and, in some ways, I was more nervous about it than any piece I’d had published as a journalist. The rest of the time, I continue my training and spend weekends delving into my own psyche: reading, thinking, journaling and exploring my feelings and reactions.

I know sometimes I overstep the mark with my slightly overfamiliar asides, and I am aware I have to rein it in with clients, but finally, I feel I belong where I am and in what I’m doing.

Changing my work has made me a happier person and a better lover, friend and mother. I am calmer, steadier, less reactive. Life can be a trial but every day I wake up feeling a well of excitement.

Sometimes, I have to pinch myself. I’m 52 and, finally, I’ve found the job I was born to do.