The School of Life Therapy

My experience with the School of Life psychotherapy team has been brilliant. Despite an awkward start (owing to office/admin staff communication deficiencies, not any interaction with the therapy team), I subsequently found out about and attended the Open Day they were holding, and starting then I have found everyone I have dealt with to be sharply intelligent and focused, with empathy and imagination, a very rare mix of traits and something you really do want in a psychotherapist. The open day was helpful in allowing me to find out more about how therapy works. I couldn't have felt more at ease in a potentially daunting situation. The head of therapy couldn't have been friendlier, while being very professional, and my only disappointment is that she herself is not available right now to take on a new client. But I spoke with others on the therapy team and have made a good plan with one of the therapists who seems like a great match for me. What a positive and potentially life-changing experience!

I have not had therapy myself with TSOL before but I know several of the therapists who work for them as extremely capable, passionate, empathetic and skilled practitioners who will provide value for those who seek help with personal or career matters. The quality of its people has in fact inspired me to apply to join the faculty myself. I believe in the value that The School of Life provides for its service users.

Much appreciated space and emotional support during a really difficult time. The therapist was perceptive, pragmatic and professional. The sessions have helped me hugely. Thank you

I've followed their YouTube channel for at least 2 years now and it helped me a lot in my self-development. About 4 month ago I reached a state of life crisis and I opted for ongoing psychotherapy sessions. Since I'm not living in London, I was happy that I could have remote sessions with an accredited psychotherapist. It took me plenty of time, work and money, but with perseverance from both me and my psychotherapist I overcame my situation and now I'm happy about my life course.

The therapists at The School of Life are a wonderfully humane, kind group of people - smart, well-read, bright and relatable. We offer classes at The School of Life which are inspired by principles from psychotherapy and teach participants so much about themselves and how they relate to others - but these workshops are not 'therapeutic' in the strict sense, so we are passionate about being able to offer psychotherapy as a such a rewarding and valuable 'next step' for all those who wish to take it up.

My experience with The School of Life Therapy has been absolutely wonderful. I see a therapist online and it has been remarkably helpful. I cannot say enough good things about this program.

I signed up for a £100 School of Life Therapy initial consultation, in the spirit of self-improvement. I liked some of the therapy articles on the School of Life website, and (inaccurately) assumed that the fact that The School of Life was more expensive than most was an indicator of quality. When I arrived, one of the first things the therapist said, before we even got into the consultation room, was, “You’re very high energy. We’ll need to calm you down.” I was slightly high energy because I’d rushed to get there (I was half an hour early, so went for a walk, and then ended up 3 minutes late), and was in a good mood. I didn't think it was a good start for the therapist to frame my good mood as something negative to be corrected. When I was first opening up I became distracted by a repeated buzzing noise, and had to ask if it was the therapist’s phone. It was. She took it off the table and put it on "do not disturb" mode. I then became distracted by notification sounds from her computer. I asked her if she could turn them off as well, and if she usually switched off notifications before starting a session. She said she did but had them on because I’d messaged her saying I was late, as if it was my fault. She could have just said "sorry”. At one point she said she needed a few moments to finish typing her current notes, so I said I’d look at the books on the wall, which prompted her to start talking about the books at length, which were School of Life decoration and totally unimportant. I had to remind her that I was looking at them to give her time to finish her notes. (Come to think of it, aren't therapists supposed to write up their notes after a consultation?) It happened 7 or 8 times in the first 25 minutes that the therapist mischaracterised something I’d said, at one point even interrupting me when I was halfway through describing something, and I stopped myself from checking the time or leaving early because I thought that would be rude (maybe I need therapy to train me to be less concerned about other people’s feelings). By this stage I knew the endeavour was pointless, and so decided to make the most of the time by asking her a question about therapy. My question was, there are many ways a person can improve themselves - what did she think was the unique value of therapy? She answered that people have a wound from a past relationship (agreed so far), and that therapy is a way of having a new relationship in which the client doesn't experience that wound, e.g. the client might have been rejected in a past relationship but won't be rejected by the therapist. I’d never heard this description of therapy before (because it's wrong), and countered that surely a client unconsciously knows that the therapist is not rejecting them because they’re paying them, and doesn't that make the lack of rejection less meaningful? She said that therapists can refuse to see patients, and I countered that a therapist wouldn't keep all of their patients as friends. She then said that the financial structure of therapy makes it “safe”, which doesn't entirely make sense and didn't address my question. She eventually said she didn't understand why I'd chosen the School of Life Therapy, where a consultation therapist refers new clients to another therapist for longer-term therapy, instead of choosing my own therapist, as if it was somehow my fault that the session was going badly. I’d actually be very happy for someone else to choose a therapist for me, if they did so intelligently. My overall impression was that the therapist was unprofessional, underqualified, and kept on trying to blame me for her shortcomings, which was downright unpleasant. My friends are better listeners, have a better understanding of how therapy works, and are nicer people. The whole experience was a huge waste of time and £100. Avoid. EDIT: They gave a refund and offered me a complimentary session, which I declined but appreciated. I’ve kept my star rating at 2, however, since if that therapist is still working there I can’t possibly recommend it.

After battling depression and suicidal thoughts for a good long time (extremely violent parents leading to a lot of trauma and low self worth), I came across the School of Life's career counselling service. It seemed extremely expensive, but I thought that was a sign of quality, and on their website the credentials and experience of their career counsellors seemed extremely significant. I booked in for a 2 hour career counselling session with one of their career psychotherapists which came highly recommended in the School of Life's £50 "Finding Your Career Potential" workshops. I turned up very excited, because although I had spent the last year taking a sabbatical from work to finally get over my crippling depression, finding a meaningful career alluded me. To start the session, I opened up to the counsellor over my childhood of being beaten with belts if I made the smallest mistake and though I've come to terms with what happened (as much as one can), the fear of failure, imposter syndrome and low self-worth are still eating away at me in the workplace. I went over all the notes I had made from books on careers about what I want to do, including reading out the exercises that I had done in the aforementioned £50 workshop with the School of Life. The counsellor then spent the next hour and a half tearing into me; telling me to stop being a victim about my childhood abuse, that I "should" have been working instead of taking a sabbatical, to stop wanting to work in a charity position to help others as investment bankers do more good for the world by paying their taxes, that I probably wasn't the only child on my street being beaten by their parents, calling me a judgemental and envious person, that I have a "CV written by a 10 year old boy"... these are all direct quotes. He dismissed everything from the £50 School of Life workshop as nonsense, and that I should be working instead of going to such things... which made me question who is wrong here? The School of Life in their workshops for charging people for "nonsense" or the therapist for being a bad therapist? After the helpful, productive observation that my CV was done by a child, he referred to one of my "little boy stories" from my CV and I noticed he got it completely wrong. He didn't have my CV there and didn't even go over it with me. It seemed that he just glossed over it at some point, hated it, forgot the specifics apart from the intention to tell a vulnerable person seeking help that they have a CV of a 10 year old. Translation: make them feel like dirt. Feeling like dirt is very much how I felt walking out of that session, and during it, all I felt was panic. Panic that I had spent so much of my savings on figuring out an area of my life that is so difficult, and slowly watching the time on the clock tick away as the therapist kept making negative judgements about my character, choices, needs and dreams. Watching that money and time waste away as I tried to justify how I had lived my life and trying to change the subject back to what I can choose for a career, because THAT is what I had come for and what I wasn't getting. Then, he cut off the £295 session half an hour early. I would say that hurt a lot, if it wasn't for the relief to get out of there to lick my wounds and pick up the brittle pieces left of my self-esteem. Although he had opened up the can of worms about my childhood trauma (which is a pretty big Pandora's Box) and urged me to stop being a victim, he told me he wouldn't want to see me for any further sessions or therapy. "Just go get a job, any job. It doesn't matter which, just get a job," was his advice. Give up on purpose and growth, a career with meaning he scolded me, because "a job is JUST a transaction, not a parental relationship." Don't be fooled by the good reviews here. The SoL had NO reviews at all until I and another left negative ones. Now they magically have several good ones, mostly from SoL staff. A business that tries to trick you into buying their services with fake reviews is not worth your money or time.

I don’t want to go into details about my personal therapy except to say this is a first class service.