(MBACP, MSc, BA, Dip)
Simon Brown
Integrative Counselling
07917 280 245
email: psyb.info@proton.me
"We are all masterpieces.
Sometimes, all we need is a little restoration."
Brighton. United Kingdom.
"I welcome all, regardless of any individual’s characteristic. I strive to celebrate, protect, and safeguard the right for people to express gender and sexual identity, race, and ethnic background as well as religious or cultural centricities."
I help people find balance, acceptance, direction, and empowerment in their lives.
I strive to create a welcoming, warm, genuine relationship that is non judgemental, empathic and full of positive regard.
Within this relationship we will foster a safe space where you can fully express yourself and develop assets to live adaptively and creatively.
Here, I will work with you in a collaborative and supportive manner to explore your emotions, thoughts and behaviours.
This may include working through uncomfortable issues and challenges. I will walk alongside you, on your path, allowing you, to feel heard, respected and understood.
I also specialise in providing support to people who want to address underpinning reasons to their relationship with alcohol, substances or 'behavioural addictions. This could be exploring ways to manage, minimise, stop or stay abstinent.
Here, I offer my skills, competencies and self to engage with you in a counselling or psychotherapy framework. I can create bespoke programs that include Support Planning and strategies to increase Recovery Management.
I also offer support to the 'significant others, partners, family members,' who may be directly or indirectly involved in someone else's concerning behaviour.
I am available to support people in a variety of ways.
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Long Term or Fixed Term Therapy.
Face to Face Counselling
​Home Visits.
Telephone.
Online.
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£70 (50 min face to face)
£90 (90 min face to face)
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£55 (1 hour online / telephone)
£60 (full time students over 18)
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Costs for Bespoke Recovery Programs are negotiable depending upon
your needs.
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Extra Reading?
Integrative Counselling
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Integrative Counselling is a synthesis or blend of conventional and contemporary psychological and counselling/ healing approaches and interventions that are used in the therapeutic setting. This is based upon the premise that no single psychological or therapeutic approach that can fully describe what has occurred or might be occurring in a person.
Moreover, it questions the belief that people can be fully supported by only one particular type of therapy. After all, we are complex, multidimensional entities living in a complex
and at times confusing world so why should one shape or theory fit all?
Integrative counselling can blend a plethora of theories and approaches together to form new methods and ways of working. Depth and developmental psychology, behavioural and cognitive methods and humanistic and transpersonal aspects are often used. We can also go outside the box and involve more novel ways of working depending upon your preference.
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"Therefore, Integrative Counselling can be seen as a therapeutic ‘art form.’
It is a way of creating new intuitive systems that are aimed to fit each client,
rather than try to fit a client to a preconceived template or view."
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It noted that the advantage of Integrative Counselling for a client is that the approach offers potency, and a lot of scope and flexibility within the counselling setting. It is ideal for those who want to find an equilibrium or edge and explore, question and develop themselves.
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This can range from simple goal setting and reaching personal targets to working with ongoing, interrelated, and multifaceted issues. When I work, a great deal of intuition and immediacy are also in the mix.
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After all, even though we may share similar traits with each other, we are unique, and I respect this aspect of the self. Moreover, cultural and subcultural identities are also fully acknowledged as we engage, as well as any other existential realms.
So, without judgment I welcome you, all of you, your light, your shadow, hopes and dreams and all the things inbetween.
About Me
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I have lived in Brighton since I was sixteen. As much as I have seen this city change over the years I too have been on a personal journey of development and change. I spent my twenties and thirties in bands (guitarist), as a music producer, production manager and club promoter. My forties saw me engage in martial arts, creative writing and family. Here, in my fifties, I still play guitar, work in the drug and alcohol sector and feel younger and more settled in myself then I have for a long time. So in a nutshell, over the last forty years I found life profound and meaningless, got lost in a maze of meaning, found myself, lost myself, found myself again and then realised that I didn't really, as it's a lifelong pursuit of discovery, change, adaptation and balance!
I consider myself as a robust individual who can hold sensitivity and ferocity, sadness and pain.
I also help people find their assets and strengths, their joy, sense of meaning and fulfilment.
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I have a natural curiosity and am very interested in what makes people ‘tick.’ Thus, I will invite you to enter deeper and contemplative realms of working. This may range from identifying what purpose or premise you may hold, how your beliefs and values, fears and hopes to influence you. We can explore what and why things make you laugh, what makes you sad, what metaphors and stories you describe yourself and the world around you with and how your nonverbal communication speaks.
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I also firmly believe our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing can be greatly affected by what we eat, how we exercise, rest, sleep, dream and play. In so much, working and viewing ourselves as an holistic and immersed entity in our many environmental systems allows a myriad of therapeutic and growth factors to occur as well inviting along real life benefits.
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"Therefore, as an Integrative practitioner my aim is to foster a sense of feeling whole, authentic empowerment, autonomy, assertiveness, self-worth, esteem and efficacy."
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I will offer you unconditional positive regard, empathy and congruence as well as my academic and professional and practical training and experience. Most importantly I will offer my fully attentive collaborative self. Through forming and developing a genuine, safe and working therapeutic alliance we can ‘walk,’ along any path of your life journey, define, explore, think, plan and share.
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I will honour the opportunity of working with you, listening to and getting to know the aspects of life you share with me. This may comprise of your internal and external worlds, your historical self, your development, your present moment and your future.
In regard to my 'therapeutic credentials' as it were, I have been a qualified counsellor since 2014. I worked at CRI Addiction Services and BHT Wellbeing Service for a while before going into private practice. Alongside this, and since 2000 I worked in therapeutic and social support settings including HMP, outreach support, young people's and alcohol and drug services. I currently work for a residential rehabilitation service. I have supported a wide variety of people. I know first hand that lasting change and recovery is possible.
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I hold a BA in Psychology and Management Studies (Sussex University), a Diploma in Integrative Counselling (CPCAB) as well as a MSc in Substance Misuse (Sussex University). I have worked for Brighton University as a part time lecturer for their Critical Addiction Studies course and other freelance positions in a trainer capacity. I am an Advanced Practitioner for the Addiction Professionals and an Individual Member of the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP).
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"I want to support you to include and transcend your past and to explore and develop your present self.
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I will support you to develop your assets and abilities, to create and maintain a meaningful and fulfilling life.
A life you deserve."
"Does my view of addiction fit with you?"
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For those who are seeking support with their relationship with alcohol, substances or over inflated behaviours I offer over 20 years of applied and academic experience. 'The relationship' people have with these issues is commonly referred to as 'addiction,' substance misuse, alcoholism etc. Here is my view on the phenomena. I think its important to highlight in view of working with people who want to address a complex, often stigmatised, converging and competing issue.
‘Addiction’ can be a very 'loaded term.' It is a linguistic tool, a label often used to describe a constellation of factors and behaviours that can be seen to be a progressive development along a continuum. This continuum can include experimental, recreational & habitual engagement, dependency and addiction towards a particular substance, action or behaviour.
It is possible to maintain a ’relationship’ that is leading towards or manifested into an ‘addiction,’ and some people may have relatively low harms associated to their particular attachment. However, it is usually the case that as people progress down the 'rabbit hole,' as it were, they find themselves in physiological, financial, relational and existential crisis. Often, the main issue in seeking support for most people is to minimise or stop the risks and harms associated to any particular behaviour. Whilst detox and treatment are potent interventions in this pursuit, their is often a need for a deeper understanding through counselling to support people make lasting change.
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There are a multitude of theories, templates and models that attempt to describe addiction, let alone the opinions, myths and social distortions that can influence us. Each theory or opinion may hold a truth and thus create a particular loyal following towards its premise.
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So too, each theory or approach may offer a philosophy, a way of perceiving, treating, managing and maintaining a certain approach and way of life that is aimed to suit each reference group. Self and group identity is also inextricably linked to those with any relationship towards something, which can be a positive attribute or present a challenge to negotiate. However, counselling offers a safe space to personally explore our beliefs and values, goals and aims towards who ‘we are’ and ‘what we’ want.
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My personal leaning towards describing and working with addiction and so too, other concerning behaviours, is the ‘biopsychosocial model.’ This model or 'framework' posits that there is usually a convergence of biological, psychological and social components that can be explored and addressed. After all, we are entities, both biologically & psychologically driven, who live in social environments, and each component has influence and persuasion in our actions.
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However, this personal view aside, I am able to work alongside people who may want to subscribe to a particular viewpoint such as the disease model, self-medication theory or recovery management to name a few. Particular theories or viewpoints do not compete and are arguably, a part of the biopsychosocial framework.
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I am able to support people to negotiate pathways and will always act with benevolent ethics towards each client. I work in an holistic way supporting people to contemplate and make their own decisions to reach authenticity, to give themselves meaning, fulfilment, strength and pride.
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Even though I am experienced and an advanced practitioner, I do not consider myself an expert in the field. Nonetheless, I believe I have invaluable experience, robust transferable academic and practical knowledge and the personality and attitude to help others find their way through the tasks and processes needed to negotiate a trajectory through your own ‘Maze of Meaning.’
