Counselling is the opportunity to discuss your thoughts and feelings about any issue that you face in everyday life that you may wish to explore and understand better, in a professional and confidential setting, with a qualified and competent counsellor, over a period of time. It is a collaborative process in which you, as the expert in your own life, gain greater awareness and find your own answers.

Counselling is for everybody. Every human being has a basic right to have access to a trained professional who can help with overall growth and wellbeing. Even counsellors need counselling! Anyone with a willingness to explore any area of life can benefit from meeting a counsellor.

Counselling is a continuous process where a counsellor uses a psychological framework to facilitate insight and awareness, helping you discover your own answers. This process takes anywhere between 4 and 20 sessions depending on your needs. Each session lasts for one hour. You can start by booking an appointment with a TalkItOver counsellor, after which the counsellor will schedule subsequent appointments with you.

Yes. All information that you share will be kept strictly confidential. Confidentiality is a fundamental ethical obligation for every counsellor — no information can be disclosed to another person without your consent. Every counsellor at TalkItOver is ethically bound to maintain confidentiality, except in situations where there is a risk of self-harm, harm to others, or child abuse.

Every counsellor at TalkItOver holds a minimum of an MSc degree in Counselling Psychology, with a specialisation in Family & Marriage Counselling, along with 250 hours of supervised counselling internship experience in individual, couples, group or family counselling. Several of our counsellors also bring rich corporate experience in functions such as HR, Training & Development from well-known organisations.

Yes, counselling at TalkItOver is a professional service. We follow BACP, APA and ACA guidelines for counselling practice and are accountable to maintaining professional standards in everything we do. This is core to TalkItOver — as counselling in India is sometimes offered by those without professional training who claim to be counsellors.

The setting is private, confidential and professional. TalkItOver counsellors practise in professional settings designed for individual, couples, group and family counselling — whether face to face or online. Professional counsellors are ethically bound to practise in appropriate settings and not in informal environments such as a coffee shop.

Once you have decided to meet a TalkItOver counsellor, you can book an appointment by clicking here. You will see a list of counsellors and their profiles. Sessions are available face to face in select locations and by telephone or online across India. Follow the step-by-step instructions in the online booking form to secure your appointment.

To book an appointment, follow the steps below:

• Step 1 — Select a counsellor
• Step 2 — Select a preferred time slot from the available slots
• Step 3 — Confirm your personal details
• Step 4 — Pay to secure your slot. For face-to-face sessions, pay 60% of the session fee at the time of booking and the remaining 40% at the session. For telephone or online sessions, the full session fee is payable at the time of booking.
• Step 5 — Meet your counsellor at the scheduled time
• Step 6 — Schedule your next appointment directly with your counsellor

Your details during the booking process will remain strictly confidential.

Counsellors usually update their available slots regularly. When an existing client finishes or a cancellation occurs, new slots are added. We recommend checking for availability after a day or two, or writing to contact_us@talkitover.in for an update on the next available slot.

After booking, you will receive a confirmation email and SMS. For face-to-face sessions, the confirmation email will include the address, route map and contact details of your counsellor — the remaining 40% of the fee is payable at the session. For telephone or online sessions, the confirmation will include the details needed to connect, and the full fee will already have been paid at the time of booking. At the end of your first session, your counsellor will guide you on next steps and future appointments.

Your counsellor will discuss subsequent sessions with you at the end of each appointment and give you your next scheduled time directly. Fees for subsequent sessions are settled directly with your counsellor.

A friend, parent or sibling is not permitted in the counselling session as the process is strictly confidential. A child may attend only for family counselling sessions, provided the child is above 12 years of age. For child or adolescent counselling sessions, parents may accompany the child and the counsellor will guide parents on whether to be present for part or all of the session.

No — this is a common misunderstanding. Counsellors are not advice givers or problem solvers. They are professionals trained with skills and competencies that help individuals gain awareness, growth and transformation through a warm and understanding relationship. There is no magic solution or one-size-fits-all answer — every person and their situation is unique.

No. It is a misconception that counselling is beneficial only in school or hospital settings. Counselling is valuable in any context — at an individual, organisational, workplace and community level.

There is often confusion between these roles, partly because there is no single professional regulatory body for counselling in India. While all three may work with similar issues, they differ in philosophy and focus. Counsellors and psychologists typically focus on the psychological, emotional and sociological aspects of helping a person grow. Psychiatrists focus primarily on the biological aspects of mental health and are qualified to prescribe medication.

Counsellors are trained to feel with the client and not feel for the client. If a counsellor finds themselves personally affected by what a client shares, they are required to work through this with their own supervisor or personal counsellor. Professionally trained counsellors develop skills and coping mechanisms to remain objective and empathetic — not sympathetic or emotionally enmeshed.

Counsellors work with an open, neutral and non-judgemental attitude, seeking to understand each person from their own socio-cultural and religious context. As part of their training, counsellors are exposed to various worldviews and belief systems. They are ethically bound not to impose their personal religious beliefs on clients.

No. Professional counselling is based on psychological schools of thought that are scientific in nature. Counsellors aim to understand and relate to your own worldview and belief system in order to help you more effectively — without imposing their own.

Because counselling is not about giving advice, dependency of this kind is unlikely. The counselling relationship is designed to help you help yourself — enabling you to become more self-aware, more accepting of yourself and more self-reliant over time.

In our experience, people often share after counselling that they “feel lighter”, “gain clarity”, “learn more about themselves and others”, “feel less stuck or overwhelmed”, “feel energised”, “feel more positive and hopeful”, “make better decisions”, “see positive changes” and “improve their relationships”. This is often possible because the counsellor is neutral and objective while working with you.

Counselling is a continuous process, based on your individual needs and goals. It typically lasts anywhere between 4 and 20 sessions. The counsellor and client decide together on timing and the number of sessions. Sessions are usually one hour, held on a weekly basis.

Please visit our Fees page for current session rates. TalkItOver is committed to making counselling accessible and our fees are set to reflect that.

TalkItOver offers sessions face to face in select locations across India, as well as by telephone and online. You can choose whichever format works best for you. Visit our Contact Us page for more details.

The effectiveness of counselling is partly because the counsellor is a third person — someone who is neutral, objective and non-judgemental. It would be unethical for a counsellor to provide professional counselling to friends or relatives, as they could not be fully neutral with them.

Professional counsellors are trained with skills and competencies to listen, attend, observe, focus, reflect and interpret in a facilitative process with you. The counsellor will also help you gain insight and awareness so that you better understand your own situation and come up with your own answers — in collaboration with your counsellor.

This is a valid concern in a country where counselling is still widely misunderstood. Through this website, we hope to educate and create awareness about what counselling truly is — so that the stigma attached to it gradually fades. We believe in a future where people see counselling as a positive step towards personal growth and wellbeing.

Absolutely. This is precisely why counsellors do not work from an advice-giving or solution-providing approach. Each person’s background, context, personality, beliefs, situation and culture is unique — and TalkItOver counsellors work from every individual’s unique needs and goals, never applying a generalised approach.

Counsellors are ethically bound to be unbiased, non-judgemental and neutral. However, counsellors are human too. If any bias becomes apparent, they are required to address it with their supervisor and work through it.

Counselling is neither western nor eastern. It works with each individual’s own culture, background and belief system. The core principles of counselling are universal and have been applied effectively with people from all cultures and backgrounds.

Yes. Counselling is a continuous process based on the needs and goals of the individual. Effective counselling is rarely possible in just one or two sessions. It typically lasts between 4 and 20 sessions.

You may be wondering where to start — but the good news is that the counsellor usually takes the lead. They will begin by introducing themselves, helping you feel comfortable, explaining how the process works and answering any questions you may have. You can start sharing whenever you feel ready.

The counsellor will come to understand your context through conversations about your family background, cultural background, beliefs and worldview. This is an ongoing process — the counsellor will continue building their understanding of your perspective and help you accordingly.

Since counsellors do not provide advice, there is no scope for “wrong advice”. At a later stage in the process — once the counsellor understands your context well — they may offer suggestions or recommendations. Even then, nothing can be forced upon you. It is entirely your choice whether to consider it or not.

The counsellor’s role is to create a warm and accepting relationship in which you feel comfortable talking about whatever you wish to. Based on what you share, the counsellor will work to understand your life, facilitate self-exploration, insight and awareness, and help you move towards your own goals.

There are several myths. The most common ones are:

• Counsellors provide advice and specific solutions to your problems
• Older people with little formal qualification make better counsellors than younger trained professionals
• Life experience is more important than professional training in counselling skills
• Counsellors use their personal opinions, intuition and beliefs to help clients
• Counselling is an art and not a science
• Counsellors are perfect and do not need counselling themselves
• Counsellors primarily work with career guidance and addiction
• Anyone with a passion for helping others can call themselves a counsellor