Therapy services Brighton and Lewes

Individuals

Individual counselling, psychotherapy or clinical psychology can cover a broad range of topics, presenting issues or symptoms, and can be short-term or open-ended.  We are here to assist you in locating the right type of therapy with the right clinician.

The purpose of individual therapy can be as varied as what brings a person to therapy, and can range from alleviating suffering, through to an open-ended process of building a more solid and healthy relationship with ourselves and with others around us. We offer a wide range of therapies to address one or more issues depending on what you may need.

Couples therapy

Couples counselling is similar in format to individual counselling or psychotherapy, however, there are generally two distinct differences. Firstly, couple work is more task driven, meaning that we work together with you and your partner to establish what you are looking to achieve from the work, and secondly, it is generally of time-limited duration whereas individual psychotherapy is usually open-ended.

Some couple counsellors or therapists may agree to see you and your partner on a less frequent basis than weekly as the work progresses and your communication together improves. Please discuss this with your counsellor or psychotherapist at your initial consultation.

Child, adolescent and family therapy

As well as psychotherapy for individuals and couples, we have psychotherapists and clinical psychologists who are registered and accredited to work with children of all ages from infants through to late adolescents.  Our team have NHS and CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) experience and specific in-depth training in this field. Therapeutic interventions for this client group may not be weekly or follow the same format as individual therapy, but your clinician will discuss this with you, and it will be agreed based on your child’s need.

Family therapy, also known as systemic psychotherapy, is a specific method of working with the entirety of the relationships that comprise a system – be it a couple, a traditional family and, of course, blended and non-traditional families.

Organisations and businesses

We offer corporate counselling and therapy services for businesses and organisations. Whether you work in or run an organisation, mental health in the workplace is very important. We can work with employee assistance programmes (EAPs) to supply therapy and counselling services to staff, and also offer bespoke services to any business or organisation. We can offer therapy and support for a wide range of issues that staff and team members may be struggling with, as well as broader mental health support for businesses.

Coming to a decision and starting therapy

Deciding to start counselling or psychotherapy can feel daunting and unless you have previous experience of the process, can be very unknown. This website provides you with an overview of what constitutes counselling and psychotherapy.  Further resources can be found in our weekly blog posts written by our associates. It is our job to ensure you understand what you can expect from any one of us as your therapist.

Initial session

Your initial session provides an opportunity for both you and your therapist to get to know each other, and if appropriate agree on a contract for working together. For example, this could be to focus specifically on anger management counselling, or on a deeper open-ended process of  psychoanalytic psychotherapy or psychodynamic psychotherapy.

As ethical practitioners, we are professionally bound to only contract to work with clients for whom we believe counselling or psychotherapy may be beneficial, and with issues we have trained to work with. If after the initial consultation the contract remains unclear, a further session or sessions may be agreed to assess how best to proceed, which may result in agreeing on a piece of work together or may be an onward referral to a clinician who may be better suited to your needs.

If you and your therapist do decide to work together, they will arrange subsequent sessions with you at a mutually convenient time.

Is insight enough?

Some people believe that understanding a problem automatically resolves the issue.  Insight can be useful, but it does not constitute counselling or psychotherapy. It also does not generally stop us behaving in maladaptive ways.

Successful therapy depends on being able to process what you may be feeling in relation to an issue or issues – even if the feeling makes no sense to your rational mind. Therapy is therefore about the integration of our emotions with our mind. We need to know and accept what we are feeling before we can process it. Only then can we move beyond the losses (conscious or unconscious) in our lives.

Neuroscience is proving that change is ‘embodied’, meaning it resides and is experienced and expressed through the body. The old maxim ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’ applies to this, in the sense that we need to give ourselves time (and our therapist needs to facilitate this appropriately) to integrate emotional states into the body. This changes our felt sense, which in turn changes our brain and can help us shift from being focussed on hypervigilance, for example, to compassion, curiosity and healing.

Have a look at the links below to find out more:

Who is it for? | How Psychotherapy Works | Types of Therapy | FAQs | Fees | Contact Us