Chapter Three
Finding My Niche as a Counsellor
Part of Building a Counselling Practice: The Journey Beyond the Classroom
One of the questions I was asked most often when building my private practice was:
"What's your niche?"
Or so I was told. Every successful practice seemed to need one.
So I did what most people do.
I tried to find it.
I made lists.
I researched search terms.
I looked at what other therapists were specialising in.
Trauma.
Anxiety.
Relationships.
ADHD.
Couples.
Bereavement.
Burnout.
Everything seemed possible.
The problem was that the more I searched for a niche, the less certain I became.
Eventually I realised I was asking the wrong question.
I wasn't supposed to invent a niche.
I was supposed to recognise one.
When I looked back over my work, certain themes kept appearing.
Men who struggled to talk about what they were carrying.
Fathers trying to hold families together whilst quietly falling apart themselves.
People living with grief that had changed their identity.
Individuals navigating neurodivergence and wondering why life seemed so much harder than it appeared to be for everyone else.
Those weren't marketing decisions.
They were simply the conversations I kept finding myself returning to.
Looking back now, I don't think I chose my niche.
I think my clients chose it for me.
Or perhaps we found one another.
That realisation changed something else too.
I stopped worrying about trying to appeal to everyone.
Instead, I started writing for the people I genuinely understood.
Ironically, the more specific I became, the more people seemed to connect with what I wrote.
Not because everyone was a father.
Or grieving.
Or a man.
But because people respond to honesty long before they respond to marketing.
Finding your niche isn't really about excluding people.
It's about becoming clearer about the conversations you're best placed to have.
The people you're best placed to help will often recognise themselves long before you recognise them.
And once that happened, another question appeared.
If I knew who I wanted to help...
How could I make sure my own voice didn't disappear amongst everyone else's?
That became the next lesson.
Continue the Journey
← Chapter Two: The Website I Wish I'd Built First
Chapter Four → Finding Your Voice as a Counsellor
Perhaps One Day...
These chapters began as reflections whilst building Me In Time Counselling & Psychotherapy.
The more I write, the more they feel like chapters of a book that hasn't quite realised it's a book yet.
Get in Touch
Have you found your niche—or are you still trying to discover it?
I'd love to hear about your own journey.