Luke Brownlee-Williams
BACP Accredited counsellor, psychotherapist and supervisor. Couples work in Clifton, Stroud and online.
My background
I am a BACP Accredited counsellor, psychotherapist and supervisor with over fifteen years of clinical experience. I run a full time private practice in Bristol and Stroud, and see couples online across the UK.
Alongside seeing couples, I supervise other counsellors and psychotherapists, including for the University of Bristol. That means a good part of my week is spent thinking carefully about the situations other therapists find hardest. It does something useful to your judgement over time, and to your nerve.
I trained specifically in couples work, and I say so because it matters more than it sounds. Relationship counselling is a separate discipline from individual therapy. The skills do not simply transfer, and couples tend to notice within about ten minutes, usually at the point where the room gets away from the therapist.
You will see me. Not an associate, not a trainee.
- BACP Accredited counsellor and psychotherapist
- Over fifteen years of clinical experience
- Clinical supervisor, including for the University of Bristol
- Specialist couples training
- Clifton, Stroud and online
Warm, boundaried, and willing to say the difficult thing
Most couples arrive having already tried very hard. You have had the conversation at midnight, the one in the car, the one that went well for two days and then quietly stopped. You are not here because you gave up early.
The relationship is my client
Not you, and not your partner. That sounds like a technicality and it is the most important sentence on this page, because it is what allows both of you to be honest in front of me without either of you feeling outnumbered.
I am not there to decide who is right. I will not build a case for one of you. Where I see each of you individually, those sessions serve the relationship, never one side of it.
Warm, and I will challenge you
Both, at the same time. You are not paying me to nod along, and you are not paying me to blow a whistle either. If I can see the pattern playing out in the room, I will name it, kindly and plainly, and we will look at it together.
That is usually the moment something shifts. Not because I have told you anything you did not already half know, but because it is finally outside the two of you and in the middle of the room where you can both see it.
Ninety minutes, fortnightly, on purpose
Ninety minutes because an hour was designed for one person. By the time you have both said what happened, the hour has gone, and couples end up paying to have the same argument in a nicer room. The extra half hour is where the actual work sits.
Fortnightly because the change happens between sessions, in the moment one of you catches yourself doing the thing we named and chooses differently. You need two weeks to have that moment and bring it back.
A commitment from me. None asked of you.
The commitment here runs one way, and it is worth being clear which way.
I commit to your relationship, and not only for the sessions you have booked. If the two of you separate, I will not then work with either of you individually, in this practice or any other, and I will not work with either of you within a future relationship. That neutrality does not expire when the work does. It is what makes it safe for both of you to be honest with me now.
You commit to nothing. You book as you go. You stop when it is done, and you decide when that is. If something new arrives in two years, a bereavement, a redundancy, a child leaving home, you come back. I will still be the person who knows your pattern, and still the person who never took a side.
That is deliberate. Structured support when you need it, without open ended dependency. I would rather you came back three times across ten years than sat in a weekly session out of habit.
I did something else first
Before I trained, I spent fifteen years as a catering manager and running my own businesses. I know what pressure does to people, and I know what it does to the relationship waiting at home while someone is holding a company together. That is not theory to me.
I retrained at the University of Kent with a Diploma in Integrative Counselling, then at Goldsmiths, University of London in Humanistic and Psychodynamic Counselling. I have since trained in relational supervision, mindfulness, CBT and clinical hypnosis.
My early clinical work was at the University of Kent, then in the NHS as a Step 3 High Intensity Counsellor in Canterbury and Bristol. Those years taught me assessment, risk, and how to stay steady when a session gets difficult.
Since 2019 I have run a full time private practice in Stroud and Bristol. Bristol Relationships is the couples side of that work, and it is the part I care most about.
Three ways to do this
Clifton, Bristol
A comfortable, private consulting room within easy reach of the city centre. Nothing clinical about it. Directions and parking sent when we book.
Stroud
A consulting room in town, with plenty of accessible parking. Evening appointments available, which matters when two people have to get there after work.
Online
Secure video, anywhere in the UK. For many couples it works better. You are in your own home, and nobody has to drive back from a session in silence.
How I keep the work safe for both of you
The relationship is my client
I am not there to decide who is right, and I will not be building a case for either of you. Where I use individual sessions, they serve the relationship, not one side of it.
I do not hold secrets
If something significant comes up when I see one of you alone, I will help you bring it into the joint work rather than carry it for you.
I keep things clean afterwards
If the relationship ends, I will not work with either of you individually, in this practice or any other, and not within a future relationship either. That is exactly what makes it safe for both of you to be honest with me now.
The hardest part is the first phone call
Thirty minutes, free, no obligation. You tell me what's been happening and we work out together whether I'm the right person for it. Either partner can make the call.
Book a free 30-minute call