Sight Loss Counselling
Sight loss brings real, ongoing challenges and changes, not just in how we navigate but in how we’re seen, understood and included. Whether your sight loss is new, gradual, lifelong or fluctuating, you're not alone.
The Reality of Sight Loss
There are over 200 known sight conditions and those are just the ones with names. Facing diagnosis, ongoing tests and treatment plans can feel like being pulled into a system where you're no longer seen as a whole person. Medical interventions can also be deeply invasive, especially when they involve injections, surgery or other procedures on the eyes, such intimate, sensitive parts of our bodies. Sometimes, treatments are offered with the promise of restoration or cure, only to leave you worse off physically, emotionally, or both, than before. This sort of outcome can feel not only disappointing but destructive to your trust, your hope and your sense of safety. On top of that, some people face difficult choices about whether to go ahead with treatment at all, particularly when the chances of restoring vision are slim or the risks feel high. These decisions can bring fear, pressure, confusion or even guilt.
Sudden or traumatic sight loss and invasive medical procedures can have lasting emotional impacts. My practice is trauma-informed to hold space safely for these experiences.
When you're told there’s no treatment or when treatment ends, it can feel like being dropped.
At the same time, seeking support from social services or medical professionals can feel more difficult as your sight changes. Visual impairment registration or receiving a Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI), might feel like an unwanted reminder but it can also be a vital key, unlocking access to services, support, and practical and financial resources which can make a difference. Counselling can be a space to talk through those decisions without pressure.
Grief, Identity and Everyday Life
Sight loss isn’t just a medical condition, it’s a complete transformation of how you live, connect and see yourself. You may be re-learning how to do the most basic daily tasks: making a cup of tea safely, finding new ways to read, or identifying people without visual cues. These much-needed adjustments are practical but they’re also emotional. They touch on independence, dignity and confidence.
Even once-familiar environments can suddenly feel unfamiliar, unsafe. Your bedroom, kitchen or hallway might have once been comforting, easy spaces. Now they might feel hazardous. The journey from bed to toilet, or kitchen to sitting room, might have been automatic before but now requires planning, care and energy. That alteration can be deeply disorienting and deserves to be acknowledged.
Mobility is another potentially overwhelming area of change. Cane? Guide dog? Human guide? Turn-by-turn GPS? Often, it’s not just one but a combination of tools and making those choices can bring up complex feelings. Importantly, choosing to use mobility aids, whether they involve technology, animals or people, isn’t about giving up or resigning yourself. It’s about reclaiming your mobility, on your own terms. Choosing support is a sign of strength, not submission.
Disorientation itself can be unsettling. Gymnasts speak about moments mid-air when they lose a sense of up, down, left or right. Visually impaired people can experience moments like that while standing still. That spatial disconnection is more common than people realise and it can be profoundly destabilising. You’re not alone if you feel unmoored in your own space.
Relearning simple tasks can sometimes feel frustrating or even infantilising, especially when others, however well-meaning, step in to “just help out” or do things for you. For family members or partners, it may feel easier, quicker, or less upsetting to take over a task “just for now.” But even small moments of autonomy, doing something yourself, in your own way, can be powerful acts of self-recovery. Counselling can help explore these moments with care, finding a balance between support and independence which works for you and those around you.
Sight loss can also affect your work, career and sense of purpose. These changes may bring up complex feelings about identity and future plans which can be explored safely in sessions.
Sometimes, these unsettling moments can feel so overwhelming that you might wonder what’s left to live for or feel the life you knew is gone. Those thoughts are real and deeply painful. They deserve to be heard without judgment. Sight loss can stir a type of grief, shaking your sense of identity, connection or purpose. There’s space to sit with all of this safely, in counselling, beginning to explore what hasn’t been lost. Life may not look how it did before but that doesn’t mean it’s over or that you have to end your life. There are still things to be rekindled, reimagined or newly shaped, on your terms, in your time.
Relationships can change too. Roles might alter between partners, family or friends. You might feel more reliant on others or find yourself caring for someone in ways you hadn’t before. How we see ourselves and how others relate to us can be turned upside down, inside out by sight loss!
All of that deserves space.
More Than Just a Listening Ear
Sight Loss Counselling isn’t the same as a helpline or general emotional support. It’s a dedicated therapeutic process, helping people come to terms with sight loss, grappling with the grief, anger, disorientation or even relief accompanying it. This kind of counselling recognises sight loss as a form of bereavement.
I’ve trained in sight loss counselling with the RNIB, and I bring more than just theoretical knowledge. I have lived experience of blindness myself and I’ve worked with clients across a range of sight conditions. Counselling with me is grounded in quality training but also in the type of understanding which comes from living with visual impairment daily. This combination matters. It means we can work not only with ideas or coping strategies, but with the deep, often invisible impacts that come from changes in independence, identity and how the world responds to you.
While counselling is never about quick fixes, there are times when it overlaps with the practical. We might talk through workarounds for everyday challenges when it’s relevant and helpful but always in the context of what you're feeling, needing or trying to adjust to.
Support Without Assumption
As a blind counsellor, I offer a space where you're not met with awkward curiosity, pity or assumptions. You don't need to explain everything, apologise for what you're feeling or educate me about what sight loss is "really like." I already understand how strange, painful, and isolating some of it can be and how much strength it takes to just get through the day.
This doesn’t mean we’ll have identical experiences but it does mean I’ll meet you without judgment or surprise. Whether you’re navigating the early shock of diagnosis, the exhaustion of constant adaptation, or the quiet grief of losing things others don’t even notice, they all have space here.
Sight loss often intersects with other health, mental health or disability experiences. You can read more about that on the Disability and Mental Health Support page. It’s shaped by cultural messages, family dynamics and the stories we’ve learned about capability and independence. Our work together is sensitive to those layers and shaped around your unique life, not just your condition.
Sight loss often means learning new ways to do familiar things. While I can’t give you a manual, I can walk beside you as you find your way through unfamiliar terrain.
For You and Those Around You
Supporting someone with sight loss brings its own complex feelings. You may feel unsettled or unsure as the person you care for navigates big changes, including adjustments in their personality or how they relate to you. It’s natural to wish you could “fix” things, and to carry feelings of helplessness or guilt when that’s not possible. You’re not alone in this. Just as those with sight loss need space to be heard, so do their loved ones. Peer support and counselling can be invaluable resources for you too, helping you process your own emotions and find ways to cope.
Finding What Helps
Counselling is also a place to explore what else might support you. That might include peer support, local networks, advocacy or community spaces. Whatever helps reduce isolation or reconnect you with important parts of your life. You don’t have to work it all out alone.
Technology and accessibility tools may play a role in your independence. While I can’t provide technical support, I can help signpost you to resources and support networks if that’s helpful.
Ready to Begin?
If reading this brought up something you're not sure how to sit with, I invite you to reach out. Counselling can begin with a feeling. A quiet sense that something isn’t right. You don’t need to have all the words or know what to say. I offer a safe, compassionate space, paced by you and rooted in your experience.
Contact me today for a free, confidential conversation about how counselling could help.