Thinking about becoming a CBT therapist but not sure where to start? In this episode of The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, Dr Marianne Trent is joined by Sahana, a qualified CBT therapist, to explore the full pathway from PWP training to becoming a band 7 CBT therapist.

You’ll discover how the training works, what qualifications you need, and what life is really like during and after the course. From the reality of supervision and showing recorded sessions, to understanding the KSA portfolio and career progression opportunities, this episode offers an honest, practical guide to help you decide if CBT is the right path for you.

#CBTTherapist #PsychologyCareers #MentalHealthProfessionals #CognitiveBehaviouralTherapy #AspiringPsychologist

⏱️ Highlights & Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Introduction: Why CBT is a popular career path
• 01:26 – Sahana’s journey from psychology degree to CBT therapist
• 02:14 – Applying for trainee CBT roles & the KSA portfolio explained
• 04:44 – How training is funded: salary, fees, and structure
• 05:11 – Teaching blocks, supervision, and learning from experts
• 07:08 – The role of supervisors and why support is vital
• 08:02 – Group supervision & showing recorded sessions
• 10:07 – Why recordings feel daunting but are essential for growth
• 11:55 – Assessments, essays, case reports & the CTSR marking system
• 13:16 – Cohort support, peer networks & leaning on each other
• 14:55 – Training structure: 2 days university, 3 days placement
• 15:25 – Qualifying as a band 7 & what the role looks like
• 16:22 – Balancing face-to-face, remote, and group therapy work
• 18:06 – Career progression: senior CBT roles & moving into doctorates
• 19:49 – Why CBT training can be an empowering foundation for your career
• 20:42 – Wrapping up: reflections & resources

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So you want to become a CBT therapist, but don't know where to start from the training route to the reality of the job. This episode gives you the lowdown on how to qualify, what to expect, and what it's really like working as a CBT therapist in the uk. If you are exploring psychology, career options or mapping your next steps, don't miss this. I'm chatting with sahan, a qualified CBT therapist, and I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist. If you enjoy the content, please do like and subscribe for more to help support you in your psychology and mental health journey. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist, and I'm joined here by my guest today, Soshanna, who is a qualified CBT therapist. Hi Soshanna.

Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here for our second episode because we've already done one episode which people can catch up about CBT from a potential service user's angle. So someone who might want to find out what CBT is and whether it be a good fit for them therapeutically. So please do watch that one if you haven't already, and there'll be a link to that at the end of this episode. But today we're thinking about CBT as a career option, as a career move. Could you tell us a brief overview of how you came to be a CBT therapist please?

Yeah, so I finished my BSC in applied clinical psychology. That was in 2018. Then I went on to do my PWP work, so I qualified as A PWP, did that for a couple of years, and by the two year mark I started noticing this is around 2020, that there's a bit of a gap in knowledge rather. So I was finding that I'm assessing for PTSD, but I'm going to CBT therapists and getting advice from them and how to assess them. So just to bridge the gap, I felt like it was a natural progression to then going through the CBT training.

Amazing. So what did that look like? Was it provided for you via the NHS through your workplace? What was the course called and how did it all happen?

In terms of how I went about getting that role, I actually applied on the NHS website, so it would be posted as a trainee CBT role. I applied for it. To prepare for the interview, you need to have something called a KSA portfolio. So that stands for Knowledge, skills and Abilities portfolio. It's a really big portfolio where it asks you about your knowledge as a practitioner. So if you're not part of the core professions, you need to talk a bit more about what do you do within your current field, and it also looks at your skills. So things like basic principles like collaboration, working together. So as we know NHS is very multidisciplinary. Have you got experience that working together in teams and then obviously your attitudes as well. What are your motivations for applying? What have you got to bring to the table personally and how does that translate professionally? And once that's submitted and they've had a look at it, then you get onto the training after you do some interviews. So it's quite a bit of a process, but it can be done if you methodically put that work in.

Okay, amazing. Before I respond properly to what you just said, you gave me some really interesting information there that actually you did an undergraduate psychology degree that also gave you a qualification because that's really unusual. I wish I'd done that when I did my psych undergrad.

So what's funny is this was a decade ago, so psychology was still kind of, the culture was, at least in my experience, it's like you're not going to get a professional role in psychology, you're going to end up doing something else that's different to psychology. So I was very mindful about that. So this specific degree that I did, it actually attached the PWP training. So I did my PW training on my dissertation and my third year, and I actually was a qualified p ready to go off to the big world and work at low intensity.

Amazing. Thank you. I didn't even know that was possible. So for anyone that's kind of thinking about their psychology career, if you haven't yet done your psych degree, there are options that can make you actually qualified to sit with clients and do work at the point that you graduate. So you said that it's a funded role, does that mean they pay you or does that just mean that they pay your fees or is it a little bit of both?

Both. So they would pay you for your training and they will also pay you salary. So you'd be working at band six, some services do Band five. So yeah, it's a year worth of training and 44 weeks of teaching. So a week would block of two days of training and three days of placement.

So it sounds like maybe you are employed by an NHS Trust, but you are almost seconded to a university to do the learning aspects.

Yeah, so you would have a tutor to go through the portfolio and the S'S and things like that and teach you the materials. There'll also be, in my experience, there would be sort of pioneers in the models like Koski and Clark and David V. They'd come in and do masterclasses. So that way you really get to the grips of the models, see how they work and how to do an intervention with that specific disorder. But then you'd be working at a service and you'd be getting paid.

And I learned my CBT when I was a trainee clinical psychologist, and actually I've chosen this necklace very carefully today because this was the necklace that my placement supervisor gave me at the end of placement one. And I really, really liked working with her and neither she nor the guy that supervised my CBT cases are with us in this world anymore. And so I thought let's pay homage to both of those by wearing that necklace. It makes for a bit emotional even to think about it, but this is our lives, isn't it? When you are learning these skills, this is your life. You are a trainee, but it's still your real life. You'll still form real meaningful connections with the people you work with. And I still remember Brett, when he was teaching me CBT on placement, he'd be like, okay, so we've got to think about what this tells the person about their beliefs of themselves, the world and others. And even now, even though that was 2008 that he first taught me that I still in 2025 think about myself, the world and others. And so you can carry these people that have taught you these skills and remember them fondly even as you progress in your career. So total aside, but yeah, what you said about your supervisor really connected with me.

Yeah, I think that's a whole muck of a good supervisor though. When they can imprint and embed the philosophies that they're taught, they then pass on to you. Absolutely. I think your supervisors are going to be the bedrock, so you'll get two supervisors, so one through the university and the other through your service, and the structure would look quite different from each other. So in my service supervision it one-to-one, it felt more personal and really that safety net and the bond in terms of being able to work through my imposter syndrome, which we'll get into a little bit more detail, but it definitely is a very pivotal time, isn't it, where you're feeling a bit, oh, rocky, and you're needing that support. So there's the one-to-one service supervision, but then there's also group supervision, which again is safe, but it's quite different in the dynamics.

So there's three, probably up to three people, and you'd show recordings of your sessions. So it can be quite exposing, especially when you're learning to do a certain therapy and you're still unsure about how would you be as a clinician. There's people coming from different backgrounds. So I came from a pwp background, so the biggest shock for me in group supervision was why are people just not going fast enough? Usually you're just cut to the chase. But I felt CBT was a bit more like, you need to be more exploratory. Socratic dialogue that's a bit more prominent. And that's something I struggled with, which group supervision kind of really pulled that out of me throughout my year and I was able to learn from my other colleagues as well. How did they go about, oh, I really like them. I think I'm going to see how I get on with that and then show my colleagues and my supervisor how it played out. So showing recordings is definitely part of the process. So just a heads up about that,

But also know that that feels awful for all of us. So I've been on screens now regularly since 2020, maybe 2019 actually. I am well aware of the things I do on screen and I'm well aware of how I stand and how I look. I'm right with all of them now. I've seen it so much that I'm just like, yeah, that's just how I am. So it is painful. None of us really love it unless you do it all day every day like I do. And you get used to it. You, as we spoke about in the last episode, you habituate. There's no more. I know what I sound like. I know there's no more surprises coming. It is a really important part of growth and of 360 degree feedback. And even just honing in like, oh, I didn't know I did that. Or actually when I think I've got a listening face, I look really bored. It's like if we're using audio recordings, obviously you don't necessarily get that, but if we're using audio and video, you get that feedback. But I think with the audio recordings, it's also really useful to think about. Actually when I said that, I think I spoke too soon, perhaps I should have given it a minute.

We can learn so much and it is uncomfortable, but it's so useful and I hope that you are in a situation whoever's watching this, that it feels safe to have that growth.

Yeah, no, I definitely don't want to put anybody off of having recorded, albeit very uncomfortable. And this was at the height of my social anxiety. So during my training it was like, oh my God, not only am I going to have to present to my client as a trainee, but also then I'm going to show these videos to a group. But what I found really helpful, and that year I truly believe CBD helped me was a lot of self-practice. So there's a part of the training where in the portfolio you can reflect on the techniques that you actually learn on the go and apply it to yourself. And it was such a rewarding experience. And like you said, putting yourself in situations like that, you're almost practising what you put out there really, if you dunno what you're selling then, do you know what I mean? So I think it really deepened your empathy, but also your experience as a clinician as well to do that. So there's definitely things in place to help manage that. And it's an understandable fact. I want to even say that recorded sessions are daunting, nobody likes them, and they kind of know that, and they set up the supervision space knowing that. So they all support you through that.

Okay, amazing. So your training was a year. Are there assignments? Are there exams? Do you have to pass certain key elements to get to the kind of qualification endpoint?

Yes. So we need to see, well, at the time, this was five years ago by the way, but it's still similar to this structure. You see eight clients that you need to have a full course of treatment and you need to have a reflective treatment record, a portfolio in a nutshell. One of them has to be PTSD and another for depression. And on top of that, you need to submit three tapes, which you need to pass using a marking system called CTSR. So definitely have a look at that. If you are interested in pursuing CBT training, that's what they'll use to mark your tapes. And then on top of that, three essays, which they all provide, I think numerous questions, you should pick a question and then you do the essay, three different essays. Did I mention the case reports as well? There's case reports that you need to do on a specific client, obviously anonymized, reflecting on the process, the experience, but also the evidence supporting your choices, your clinical choices that you've made.

Amazing, thank you. And have you got a cohort around you? Are you all going this through this together? So hopefully you've got, I don't know, WhatsApp groups or even a person that you got on really well that you can lean on for support?

Definitely. So there was a cohort of about 20 of us, 25 of us. I'm going to say at the time during the pandemic, it was remote, but they did try to foster that sense of camaraderie, I guess by doing lunch get togethers. But I personally grew really close with my trainee, my peers rather, who were in the same services as me. So we had a group chat and we were leaning on each other. Also my group supervision and the peers in that dynamic as well. We leaned on each other as well, giving each other feedback, honestly, just supporting each other. We know just how it feels. So when we see that tape, we're like, you did really well. I really like that bit. I'm going to take that from you and I'm going to try it this week. And if something's like, oh, maybe I do that too, I completely get it.

It's part of the experience. It's part of learning and growing. So there's definitely support all around you. You've got your tutors as well. So if you are concerned about submissions or not knowing, what do I write, the content, you can speak to your course tutor, reach out to them. I've done it before when I wasn't too sure and they were so supportive. But obviously you've got your service as well, supporting you through the Say no, you're a trainee. They're not going to expect you to be like a qualified CBT practitioner. It's okay. You can make mistakes and it will be done in a safe space within a controlled supervision setting.

So important. And how does this work if someone's working full-time, whole time, equivalent five days, how many days are training, how many days are on placement? What does that look like?

So there would be two days on lectures and just with the university. So teaching days, and then there'll be three days of placement. So that would be seen about four clients, about three to four clients per day. It might sound like a lot, but you'll build up over time with that. So you won't start from the get go with four clients a day. You'll build yourself up to that point.

Amazing. Okay. So when you qualify, when you come up the other side, you are band seven?

Yeah. Yeah, it's quite impressive and I think it's well worth it for lots of reasons. But yeah, you qualify as a band seven.

And what would a typical week look like if someone was working in a full-time capacity, for example, is there an expectation of how many face-to-face hours they would typically be doing in a week?

So once you qualify, you would be expected to do face-to-face days? It really depends on the service. So if I was to speak from personal experience about since the pandemic, everything's changed, hasn't it? So half of my hours or I would take up with face-to-face clients and the other half of my week I would take up with remote clients or group clients. So group can be also face-to-face or remotely too. So at the minute I'm doing, I do four days, so I do two days in person, two days remotely.

And how many hours of intervention would you be doing across those four days typically?

So per day, if you're working normal hours throughout the weeks, it would be four clients of four contacts per day.

Great. So it's similar to when I was working in an NHS setting that I was striving for 50% or just over that. And I was just thinking as we speak about actually people who might choose to become CBT therapists, and certainly in services I've worked with, it was people who maybe already had training as psychiatric nurses and they went on to then do something more therapeutic rather than just using their nursing, but it underpinned their nursing, underpinned their knowledge really, really well. And I loved having them in our psychology team. And of course people might be choosing to do this because they may be thinking about stages beyond that, but CBT therapist is a career and a qualification in itself, and you might choose to stay there and that's absolutely okay, but of course you can begin to think about, well, maybe I might want to go on and do doctorate in counselling psychology or doctorate in clinical psychology or forensic, there's options for career growth as well. Now of course, if you're already working as a band seven, going back to a band six training role or even self-funding in the case of counselling and then still coming out as a Band seven is not without its limits, but people might want the more training and variety that's on offer from doing a doctorate course. And then of course it can then mean that you can build your career kind of seven and beyond with kind of a practitioner psychologist qualification.

So absolutely. So the natural next step would be senior CBT therapist. So that role involves not just doing one-to-one clinical work, but actually getting involved with the service side of things. So advocating for CBT therapists needs, I guess. So presenting within MDT if a clinical psychologist saying, oh, this might be appropriate for CCBT therapists, A CBT therapist in that dynamic might be, well, not necessarily because of X, Y, Z reasons, but also looking out for CPD opportunities. So there's definitely, there is a variety that you can do. You can create treatment protocols within services as well, so you can get into that role and you can move on as well. So I'm at a point where I'm thinking about expanding myself a little bit more, and yeah, it might be going down a band and looking at the doctorate training, clinical psychology training. But again, they're all, I think what I find with the CBT training is that actually it just gives you a really good foundation, most of all, confidence in yourself as a clinician.

It's a really good base and you're like, okay, well I know myself as a clinician, I'd like to sort of stretch myself a little bit more. Now it makes the transition so much more seamless, I think, to get into the doctorate train. And I find I'd considered clinical psychology when I was a PWP, but for me personally, I felt like the leap was too much. I didn't feel ready for it. And honestly, do I regret going down the CBT training route? Absolutely not. I'm so happy I'd invested that time because I'd done that. I feel much more ready and I'm doing it on my terms.

Yeah. Oh, that's so powerful, isn't it? Because actually, yeah, we need to feel ready wherever we're at. We don't want to feel overwhelmed. So thank you. It's been a really lovely episode and I think let's spam the comments if people are watching on YouTube with some love for Sahan. You've done a really lovely job in both episodes of really helping us get a feel for CBT, what it is, what it involves, and who it helps. So thank you so much for your time, Sahan and for seeing us on your day off as well.

No, thank you so much for having me. Like I said, I don't really get to talk about these sorts of things, so it's just good to sort of, I've never really seen anything like this. Listen to a video on what is CBT training. I had to do the groundwork of that asking other CBT therapist. So it's so nice to know that there's something out there that people can look at.

Perfect. That's what the podcast does, doesn't, it saves you having to research all of this and we ask all the questions, hopefully the other guys would want to know. Thank you so much for your time, Sahan, and yeah, I'll see you very soon.

Thank you. Thank you so much once again to our guest, Sahan, if you haven't yet caught the first episode we did on what CBT is, please do. There will be a link in the show notes or in the YouTube description. I would love to know what you think to this episode. I would love your comments and I do always respond too, so please do drop a comment or a question on YouTube or on Spotify, you can do that too. And if you are listening on Apple Podcast, please do rate and review the show. It really does help others to know that we are worth tuning into. If you love reading stories and learning more about people's pathways and journeys to becoming qualified psychologists or other mental health professions, please do check out both the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book and the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. They both get lovely reviews and they are such illuminating warming, inspiring reads. If you've read them already and not yet dropped us an Amazon or Good Reads review, please do. If you'd like to grab your free Psychology success guide, head along to my website, www.aspiringpsychologist.co.uk.

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