About me
How I Work
Something has brought you here. Maybe you’ve been carrying it for a while — a relationship that isn’t working, anxiety that won’t settle, a loss you haven’t been able to process, or simply a feeling that life should feel different to this. Whatever it is, this is a space where you can say it out loud.
I offer therapy that is calm, confidential, and genuinely collaborative. You won’t be given a programme to follow or a formula to fit. We work at your pace, on what matters most to you, in a way that makes sense for your life right now.
I work both short-term — focused around a specific concern — and longer-term, where deeper or more complex patterns need time and space to shift. We’ll decide together what feels right.
What I Bring
I have been practising since 1995. That’s over 25 years of sitting with people through some of the most difficult moments of a life — divorce, bereavement, trauma, the slow erosion of self-worth, the collapse of a relationship, the crisis that arrives without warning.
My training is integrative, drawing on psychodynamic therapy, Transactional Analysis, CBT, mindfulness, and somatic approaches to trauma and the body. My most recent training is in ADHD diagnosis and support — an area where many people have spent years being misunderstood before they finally have a framework that fits. I work with individuals, couples, and families, and also offer clinical supervision to experienced therapists.
My work has been published in psychotherapeutic journals, and I bring that same rigour of thought to every clinical relationship.
I practise privately, alongside GPs and mental health teams, and in collaboration with divorce and family lawyers — which means I understand not just the emotional terrain of separation, but the practical and legal landscape too.
Areas I Work With
• Relationship difficulties, marital breakdown, and divorce
• Separation, family rupture, and parental alienation
• Anxiety, depression, and obsessional thinking
• Trauma — including body-held and somatic trauma
• ADHD — diagnosis, understanding, and therapeutic support
• Bereavement and loss
• Self-harm, eating difficulties, and self-destructive patterns
• Suicidal thoughts
• Anger, shame, and self-worth
• Menopause and life-stage transitions — empty nest, retirement, new parenthood
• Workplace difficulties and bullying
• Disability-related concerns
• Identity and personal meaning
About Me
I hold a BSc (Hons) and post grad training in Psychotherapy and Counselling, and I am also a qualified clinical supervisor. I trained originally in 1995 and have maintained continuous professional development across the full span of my practice, with my most recent work focused on ADHD diagnosis and support. I work online and in person.
My ethos is straightforward: I believe people are more capable of change than they have usually been allowed to discover. My job is to create the conditions for that.
✉️ Email: Louise.whitnall@icloud.com
Just let me know.
Training, qualifications & experience
About Me
I am a mother of three, and that experience — of loving someone into the world and watching them find their way through it — has shaped both the person and the therapist I have become.
I came to psychology through anthropology. My first degree explored how cultures, systems, and stories shape human behaviour; my second looked at what happens inside the individual. Together they gave me a way of understanding people that is both personal and structural — which is, I think, what good therapy requires.
I have been practising since 1995, when I completed my Certificate in Psychodynamic Counselling at the University of Sussex. Since then I have built a breadth of training and experience that is unusual in private practice: Post Graduate Diplomas in both integrative and psychodynamic psychotherapy, training in supervision, couples therapy, CBT, and most recently, ADHD diagnosis and support.
Over the course of my career I have worked in university counselling, GP-referred practice, group therapy, trauma support for key workers, and as a counselling consultant to collaborative divorce lawyers. I have supervised therapists in private practice, worked alongside the police firearms unit, and written for psychotherapeutic journals. I also work as a consulting therapist to reality television productions, supporting participants through the psychological demands of that environment. I currently practise privately in Shoreham-by-Sea and Hove, and online.
None of that is what makes the work good, though. What makes it good is thirty years of sitting with people in the hardest moments of their lives, and learning — over and over — that people are more capable of change than they have usually been allowed to believe. That is what I bring to every session.
Member organisations
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred). Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision. Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training. All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Other areas of counselling I deal with
Relationship and communication problems?
Anger and emotional issues?
Patterns in your behaviour that you would like to change?
Would you like to:
Develop your ability to calm yourself and relax?
Improve self-esteem and confidence?
Manage conflict and expressing anger appropriately?
Reduce your anxiety and feeling less stressed?
Change the way your think about food and eating?
Learning more about your moods, behaviour and thoughts about yourself and others?
Please call for more information on 07799 648487 or email here
Therapies offered
Fees
£70.00 per session
Health Insurance/EAP
Additional information
My fees are £7500 per session for individual £150 for couples.
Please call for more information on 07799 648487 or email me here
louise.whitnall@icloud.com
