Skye Blyth-Whitelock

I work online on Monday afternoons and evenings.

I see clients in person, in a therapy room or outdoors in parks, the city or by the seafront in central or East Brighton on Tuesday afternoons, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

For in person working, we can have a chat about whether working indoors, outdoors or a combination of the two works best for you. It鈥檚 ok if you鈥檙e not sure at this stage, as we can work that out together in our initial consultation or as we go along.

For online working, I will send you a Zoom link to join the session. Please ensure you have a confidential space to talk, a secure internet connection and a camera and microphone that works on your device.  

Hi, I鈥檓 Skye, a queer, white, middle class, non-binary Buddhist, who is on the spectrum and who is a qualified integrative counsellor and registered member of the 麻豆原创. Welcome. 

Life can be beautiful and it can also be hard. Through counselling we can make space for it all, to honour the beauty and find ways to discover more of it and to explore the pain and struggle together, maybe to find a way through it, maybe to find a way to be with and to tend to it and to yourself when it鈥檚 calling for your attention. As a counsellor and as a person who also experiences all of this, my approach is to be alongside you in solidarity and with care, warmth and empathy, so that you don鈥檛 have to navigate it alone. I take a whole person approach that encompasses all of your characteristics, identities and experiences and incorporates your body, mind, heart and soul.  

I have worked in the voluntary sector throughout my professional life and have been working in mental health and wellbeing for almost a decade, managing and overseeing the provision of mental health services for babies, children and young people aged 0 - 25 with Mind and Anna Freud, delivering 1:1 counselling for adults and holding groups.

I have a level 7 Diploma in Integrative Counselling from The Minster Centre and have also trained in Wild Therapy. 

As well as working in private practice, I have provided counselling for DePaul鈥檚 service for young people aged 18-25, who are experiencing emotional distress, isolation, relationship difficulties and trauma, and for Brighton Women鈥檚 Centre, counselling women who are survivors of trauma, abuse and bereavement. 

I am an Anna Freud registered practitioner and have held reflective parenting groups that support parents to understand their and their children's thoughts, feelings and behaviours, so as to reduce conflicts and improve their relationships. 

Having apprenticed with grief tending in community, I am also a grief tender, and hold collective grief tending spaces for groups.

As an integrative counsellor, I draw upon various therapeutic approaches, depending on the needs of each client, as they emerge and change moment to moment. This includes attachment, body-based, existential, feminist, person-centred, psychodynamic, queer and transpersonal theories and approaches.

I work relationally, meaning that the counsellor-client relationship is fundamental to us working well together and for you to feel safe enough to explore issues that may hold trauma or other strong feelings and experiences. I welcome clients sharing their experience of me and will often check in to see how our relationship is developing and if there are any issues between us that need tending. Working in this way both builds trust in our relationship and can also help you to identify relationship patterns that may be present in your other relationships.

Above all, I work in a trauma-informed way that validates your experience and supports understanding of how trauma impacts you and identification of what is needed to establish a sense of trust and safety in our relationship, in your body, where trauma often gets stuck, and in the wider world. Working in this way promotes your strengths, capacities, personal choice and agency both in our work together and in life more broadly.

I take an anti-oppressive stance, meaning that I recognise the impact of systems of power and oppression on us all and see 鈥減athology鈥� or 鈥渄ysfunction鈥� as being located within the socio-economic and political structures, and the personal and professional settings and relationships in which we exist, rather than in the individual. In other words, context is everything and I work with you to think about how to resource yourself in this world and how to face discrimination and injustice in a way that feels affirming for you. 

I welcome working with all clients and have a particular interest in working with LGBTQIA+ people, young people aged 18-25, neurodivergent people, refugees and migrants. 

I offer a free, 15 minute phone chat before we start working together so that you can ask me any questions you may have about counselling and the way I work and to tell me about what you鈥檙e looking for.

I will then email you a counsellor-client agreement, client information form, data protection information and location address before having a 50-minute consultation session together. In this session, we will discuss what brings you to counselling, what you hope to get out of it and how long you want the counselling to be.  We will also decide together whether we feel like a good fit.

Counselling is a big undertaking and I know how hard it can be to talk to a counsellor, so working with someone with whom you feel comfortable enough is really important and I encourage you to look around and speak to a few counsellors before making your decision.

After that, if we decide to proceed together, our first few sessions will be about getting to know each other and about understanding more about the issues you鈥檙e bringing to therapy, in the context of your history, life experiences and relationships. Thereafter your sessions will be led by you and whatever it is you wish to discuss that session.

Sessions are 50 minutes and are held weekly, at the same time and day each week. Sessions may offered be fortnightly if finances are a barrier to access counselling.  

FEES

I offer one weekly slot for people on universal credit and/or other benefits at 拢5 per session. Sessions are limited to 20, to allow others a chance to access this slot.

I offer a limited number of low cost sessions at 拢40 for those on low income or in student or caring roles, who often worry about finances and/or have debt.

I operate a sliding scale of 拢60 - 拢90 for the rest of my sessions and ask clients to decide what they can afford to pay, depending on how comfortably they can meet their basic needs, how much disposable income they have, if they can access holidays and if they have savings or inheritance.