What to write on a therapist about page

The about page is the most-read page on almost every therapy website and the one most therapists find hardest to write, for the obvious reason that the whole training is about not making it about you.

What should go on a therapist's about page?

An about page should answer what it is like to sit in the room with you, in that order: how you work, who you work well with, then your training. Credentials reassure the second reader and never the first.

The order is the whole thing

Most therapy about pages open with qualifications. Accredited with, trained in, graduated from. It is the natural instinct, because that is what a CV does and because the qualifications were genuinely hard-won.

But the person reading is not assessing your competence yet. They are asking a much earlier question, which is roughly: would this be bearable? They want to know whether you will be silent, whether you will push, whether they will feel judged for the thing they have not said out loud to anyone.

The qualifications answer none of that, so leading with them means the first three paragraphs do no work. Put them further down, where the reader who has already decided they like you goes looking for confirmation.

Write the answer to "what happens in the room"

The strongest paragraph on any therapist's about page is a plain description of how sessions actually go with you. Not the modality name, what it feels like.

Something in the shape of: I tend to say more than some therapists. I will ask questions. I will not sit in silence waiting for you to fill it. We will spend the first session working out what you want to be different.

That paragraph does more than any list of trainings, because it lets someone imagine the hour. Two therapists with identical qualifications work completely differently, and this is the only place a prospective client can find out which one you are.

Name who you are good with, and who you are not

The instinct is to stay open so nobody is excluded. It backfires. A page that says "I work with individuals and couples across a wide range of issues" tells the reader nothing and reads like everyone else's.

A page that says "I work particularly well with people in their twenties and thirties who are functioning well on the outside and exhausted underneath" causes the right person to sit up. It also loses you people you would not have been the right fit for, which is a gain rather than a cost.

If it helps, write the sentence "I am particularly good with people who..." and then finish it honestly. If you cannot finish it, that is worth knowing, and it is a bigger problem than the about page.

The photograph

One clear photograph of your face, looking at the camera, in reasonable light. Not a stock image of a chair, not a landscape, not a shot from a wedding where you have cropped someone out.

This is not vanity. The person deciding whether to book is trying to work out if they could talk to you, and a face is most of the information they have. A site with no photograph of the therapist converts noticeably worse, and it is the cheapest thing on this list to fix.

What to leave out

Your own therapy story, mostly. Some disclosure can work, but the about page is a poor place for it. A reader who is deciding whether you can hold their difficulty does not benefit from a detailed account of yours.

Every training you have ever done. A list of fourteen CPD certificates reads as insecurity. Three or four that are actually relevant reads as focus.

"I am passionate about helping people reach their full potential." It is on hundreds of therapy websites, it distinguishes nothing, and the reader's eye slides straight past it.

The third person. "Sarah is an accredited psychotherapist who..." reads like a conference programme. Write as yourself.

A structure that works

1. One paragraph on how you work and what a session is like.
2. One paragraph on who you tend to work well with.
3. Your training, accreditation and how long you have been practising.
4. Something small and human: where you are, what you do when you are not working.
5. A booking link, not a contact form.

That is four short paragraphs. About pages fail from being too long far more often than too short.

The test

Read it back and ask whether it could be about any other therapist with your qualifications. If it could, the specific parts are missing, and the specific parts are the only ones doing any work.

If you want to see how this reads when it is done properly, there is a worked example here.