Police and Second Jobs
When deciding what to write about today, I came across an article about second jobs for police personnel in Gloucestershire. I was rather disappointed to see “hypnotherapist” as one of the sideline jobs. Now, there are two issues here, the first which is why should any of our emergency service personnel have to take on second jobs. Surely their salary should be enough to support them and their families and if it isn’t then there needs to be a review.
The second issue, which is what I would like to take issue with is that hypnotherapy is being seen as a side gig to a person’s “real job”. Now I have been involved with training therapists for more than 25 years and I know that making the leap from a full time “safe job” is a challenge and that many need to maintain both roles for a period of time before making the leap to full time therapist.
This article, I felt made it look, to me like, it was a throw away thing to do in your free time. Can you imagine anyone saying that they are a part time psychologist in addition to their job as a lawyer? This is not something that a profession should be advocating nor celebrating. Therapy, be that hypnotherapy, psychotherapy or counselling, is an earnest profession which needs to be done wherever possible as a full time occupation. Not something on the side. Let’s continue to make therapy more professional so that the next generation can read this article and think “when the hell did people do this as a sideline”.
