Did you have to take out any student loans to pay for this?

And did you pay for your fees out of pocket, or was an insurance company willing to cover it?

Was this institute accredited by the American Psychological Association?

Finally was there any outside entity you could go to?

For fun, check the licensing status of the folks whom you dealt with. Your state licensing board will have records on whether anyone has been disciplined. It can make interesting reading.

I paid for the course out of my own pocket although I think some of the students were being sponsored by employers/charities. Maybe some even had some funding from their educational body. But in the main people were paying out of their own pockets - and it's not cheap!

A lot of people would end up quite heavily in debt because it's not just the training costs which are high, but also the necessity to be in therapy for the duration of the training (this could be anything from 2 to 5 or more years depending on the qualification). Then you have to be in supervision, which also costs extra.

I reckoned that, even if you took the shortest counselling training which is 2 years for a diploma, you would be talking about a minimum of £14,000. And that is without taking into account the fact that you would have to take time off work - at least one day a week - in order to cover all the classes and lectures so you would be earning less money and have less time and energy to commit to paid employment.

The training organisation is in the UK where counselling is unregulated by government. Some training courses are accredited by the professional bodies that counsellors will aspire to belong to once qualified (such as the BCAP and the UKCP). But counsellors and training bodies don't HAVE to belong to a professional body. The course that I did was accredited by the BCAP but I saw very little evidence that any of the ethical guidelines were being followed. There was certainly no evidence of the professional body overseeing the course in any way. If I was to pursue a complaint via the BCAP, which is possible, it would be a protracted affair and I am not sure I have the stamina right now. Also, the manner in which the guidelines are being flauted is more covert than overt. The process is subtle and it would be difficult to come up with concrete evidence. It's not so much one individual incident, but more a process whereby the students perceptions and autonomy are subtly undermined. Plus the 'divide and rule' tactics and the scapegoating.

However, I will do as you suggest and contact the course accrediting body to see what I can find out. It may well be there have been complaints before, who knows?

The other aspect of the training which I found worrying was that they tied you into paying up front, well before the start of the course. It is also made very clear that the minute you set foot on the premises at the start of the course, you are tied in financially for the whole year. I found the organisation very heavy-handed about getting its hands on the students' money. This for me was a real red flag and I had never encountered such an aggressive attitude towards payment from a training institute previously.