postCpLoginRedirect wrong redirect when used with autoLoginAfterAccountActivation
Ideally I'd like to keep it separate as eventually the CP will be swapped out for a front-end solution, so any clues as to why this is happening? 


I think you're close.  Just so we're on the same plane, you're using the CP for users to edit their profiles but everything else is on the front end? Do you have a front end login form already setup? If not, get one setup at counsellors/login. 

Don't set your cpTrigger and loginPath to the same values if you intend to keep the front and back end logins separate to begin with. That's issue number 1.

On the front end, you probably want to set loginPath to something like counsellors/login and you'll want to obviously uncomment your postLoginRedirect to counsellors/dashboard so after they login, they'll get shuttled off to that page.

Set  activateAccountSuccessPath to something like something like members/activation-success and then in that template,  you can do whatever you want there, either link back to the CP with a hyperlink so users can "finish" their profiles or use Craft's {% redirect %} code to send them to the CP.