This qualitative study explores the experiences of six female, final-year counselling psychology (CoP) trainees with a parentified background. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant exploring how they made sense of their motivation to train and their experiences of training and practice. Interview transcripts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and four group experiential themes (GETs) emerged: “Counselling Psychology as a calling”; “Looking for training ‘parents’”; “Integrating parentified and professional selves”; and “Training as a journey of self-discovery”. Participants spoke of CoP as a vocation, reflected in a sense of fulfilment and belonging in practice. They described how they were looking for the “parental” nurture and containment from trainers they had not experienced growing up. Most reported not finding this in the course tutors, which mirrored and amplified difficult feelings from their pasts and impacted on their learning. However, they spoke of how they had found the “parents” they needed in clinical supervisors, which led to learning and growth. Participants described the challenges clinical practice brought as ingrained behaviours and emotions from their parentified pasts presented in client work, often in unanticipated ways. They spoke of how they were starting to negotiate the transition to a new type of helping relationship with clear boundaries and where the client, unlike parentifying parents, is not a passive recipient of care. In their final year, participants described how they had gained a new perspective on their parentification and were “finding” a new, differentiated sense-of-self as an authentic, autonomous person-as-practitioner, recognising this as an ongoing process. The findings provide insight into the experiences, needs, strengths and challenges of parentified individuals in CoP training, addressing a gap in the knowledge base due to a lack of empirical research in this area. Implications for counselling psychology and recommendations for future research are discussed.