Blanka Siejek
Integrative Counsellor in Brighton & Hove and online
I'm Blanka, a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP), and I offer psychotherapeutic counselling in person in Brighton & Hove and online across the United Kingdom.
I work at my private practice, Real Minds Therapy, and at New Road Psychotherapy Centre in Brighton and Hove.
I work particularly with anxiety, trauma, addiction recovery, and neurodivergence in adults, using an integrative, relational approach.
Who I work with: Trauma, Addiction recovery & Neurodivergent adults
People come to me carrying a fairly wide range of things, and a few areas come up often: anxiety that's stopped being background noise and started running the show, self-esteem issues or identity-challenging life transitions.
I also have direct clinical experience working in addiction recovery, with trauma including complex trauma, and with neurodivergent clients. I find myself especially fascinated by how these three areas tend to overlap, how addiction can sit downstream of trauma, how trauma can mimic or co-exist with neurodivergence, and how neurodivergent people are so often failed by approaches that simply don’t understand them.
If none of that quite describes what's going on for you, that's fine too. You don't need the right category to book a first session.
My Integrative Counselling Approach
My approach is highly relational. It’s shaped by Petruska Clarkson's framework of the therapeutic relationship, which treats the relationship itself as one of the main things doing the work, not just the container it happens in.
In practice, that means person-centred and psychodynamic thinking form the base of everything I do. Person-centred warmth gives us the solid, non-judgemental ground, while psychodynamic thinking is what helps us notice the patterns that keep showing up, in relationships, at work, in the room with me.
On top of that base, I bring in tools from Transactional Analysis, Gestalt, CBT, DBT, and Internal Family Systems (IFS); not all at once, and not because having a list of numerous modalities looks good on a website. I use what a particular client actually responds to. Some people want language for their inner parts. Some want tools to deal with overwhelming emotions. Others still want something more concrete and logical.
I believe that therapy that's genuinely tailored to you tends to involve more than one lens, and less rigidity than any single model can offer.
“It is not the techniques that heal; techniques enhance the therapy but they are not the essence of psychotherapy. It is the contactful therapeutic relationship that heals our clients' relational wounds.”
Qualifications & professional development
As a qualified, BACP-registered counsellor (MBACP) and a Practitioner Member of Addiction Professionals, I provide integrative, trauma-informed therapy.
Core Qualifications & Clinical Training
Level 4 Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling (Integrative) - CPCAB. Comprehensive clinical training integrating multiple therapeutic modalities to adapt to your unique individual needs.
Specialist Trauma-Informed Practice: Trained through Thrive LDN in the trauma-informed framework and qualified in the Rewind Technique for non-intrusive trauma and PTSD processing.
Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy: Certificate in working with neurodivergent adults, enriched by lived experience of ADHD.
Addiction Recovery Support: Hands-on experience facilitating addiction recovery at Kennedy Street Recovery Hub in Brighton. I am also a Practitioner Member of Addiction Professionals.
Continuous Professional Development: Most recent courses: “Clinical Applications of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy” and “Treating Trauma with Internal Family Systems Therapy”.
Neuroscience in Mental Health: currently working through the HarvardX Micro-Bachelors Programme in the Fundamentals of Neuroscience.
My Path to Counselling
I didn’t take the traditional, straight-line route into this work. Before retraining, I spent over a decade in corporate marketing and at tourism boards, and later ran a natural skincare brand. Whatever the job, I ended up gravitating towards people and their psychological struggles. The career changes that followed were very much my ADHD at work, something I only found out about much later.
Having experienced firsthand how powerful counselling can be in my own life, I wanted to offer that same anchor to others. So I retrained, and the career detours turned out to be useful to the people I now sit with.
Clinical Standards & Ethics
To ensure the highest standard of safe, ethical practice:
I am a Registered Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP) and practise in accordance with the BACP Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions.
I practise under regular clinical supervision in accordance with BACP guidelines.
I hold full professional indemnity insurance to practise both in-person and online.
I have an Enhanced DBS certificate.
What to Expect in a Counselling Session
Fifty minutes, held weekly. Some weeks will feel deeply productive; others might feel like we’re circling something without quite landing on it, and that’s completely normal. Therapy is rarely a straight line, but it is a consistent space where you don't have to carry things alone.
Locations: In-person sessions in central Brighton and Hove, or online.
Session Fee: £55 per 50-minute session.
We start with a free informal chat to see how it feels to work together.
To learn more about what to expect in our therapy sessions, please visit the Frequently Asked Questions page.
Let’s start with a conversation
Therapy works best when you feel safe, supported, and understood. A quick consultation is a low-pressure way to explore what working together would feel like without any obligation to commit.
Choose a date and time for a free 15-minute video chat to talk through what you're hoping to get out of therapy and figure out if I'm the right counsellor for you.
