Counselling for Family Issues in Brighton & Online
Supporting you to navigate family challenges with understanding and care
Family relationships can be a source of great comfort – but they can also be a source of deep pain and confusion. Whether it’s ongoing conflict, distance, communication difficulties, or old wounds resurfacing, these relationships often touch the most vulnerable parts of us.
Counselling offers a space to make sense of family dynamics, both past and present. Working together, we can begin to understand the patterns that keep you stuck, and help you move toward more authentic, compassionate connections with yourself and others.
What is Family Issues Counselling?
Family issues counselling is a form of therapy that helps you explore how your early family experiences shape the way you relate to others today. It’s not about blaming anyone, but about understanding the roles, expectations, and emotions that have developed within your family relationships – and how these continue to affect you.
You don’t need to attend with other family members (though some do). Individual therapy (which is what I offer) can be just as valuable, offering the chance to process experiences in your own time and space, with the focus being on you.
Whether you’re struggling with a partner, parent, sibling, or adult child, therapy can help uncover what’s beneath the surface – and support you in building relationships that feel more stable and fulfilling.
Common Family Issues
Every family is different, but some of the difficulties people bring to therapy include:
- Conflict or communication breakdowns
- Feeling stuck in repeating patterns or roles
- Estrangement or emotional distance
- The impact of childhood neglect or trauma
- Struggles with boundaries or emotional dependence
- Caring for a family member with addiction or mental health issues
- Navigating family changes such as divorce, loss, or parenthood
These experiences can leave you feeling drained, guilty, angry, or unseen. Counselling provides a calm, non-judgemental environment to explore these feelings and understand where they come from.
How Therapy Can Help With Family Issues
In therapy, we’ll look at both the present and the past. You might begin by talking about what’s happening in your family life right now, and then gently start exploring how earlier experiences might be influencing how you respond to those situations today.
This process can help you:
- Recognise and change repeating relational patterns
- Develop healthier emotional boundaries
- Understand the origins of guilt, anger, or resentment
- Improve your communication and self expression
- Feel more grounded and confident in your relationships
Psychodynamic and relational approaches focus on the deep connections between past and present – helping you gain insight into why you feel and behave as you do, and giving space for change to unfold naturally over time.
Counselling for Family Issues in Brighton
In-person sessions take place in a comfortable, confidential setting in Brighton, near Preston Park. This can be especially helpful if you want a quiet space away from your home environment to reflect and explore.
Therapy in Brighton offers:
- A regular weekly time that’s just for you
- A consistent, private space to focus on your relationships
- The stability and support to understand yourself more deeply
Online Therapy for Family Issues
If you’re not local to Brighton or prefer to work from the comfort of your home, I also offer online therapy via Zoom.
Online counselling provides the same care, confidentiality, and depth of exploration as in-person therapy – it simply offers more flexibility.
Beginning Counselling
Starting therapy can feel daunting, especially if family issues have left you feeling unheard or dismissed in the past. You don’t need to have all the answers or even know where to begin — we’ll move at a pace that feels comfortable for you.
If you’d like to explore counselling for family issues and relationships, you can book a short initial phone call to ask questions or find out more about how I work.