Ocean Village: One year anniversary for local counsellors

The Empathy Project on Canute Road opened in April 2024 and now provides unlimited counselling sessions for around 150 people per month, including a variety of children, adults, couples and family.

The team of 13 serve anybody within Southampton, New Forest, Eastleigh and the Isle of Wight, and was born out of the collective experiences of those who started the project.

“Everybody within our organisation is what we described as being a lived experience counsellor,” said Tom Bulpit, managing director and psychotherapist at The Empathy Project.

“We have all been through difficulties in our life with our mental health, we have all had lots of therapy ourselves and we do the job we do to give back to people in similar situations.”

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Tom’s mum was street homeless in Southampton and died, with the psychotherapist admitting that he was having “dark thoughts” when he was 14.

Tom Bulpit, managing director and psychotherapist at The Empathy Project. (Image: The Empathy Project) His school found a local charity who sourced a counsellor, who Tom said was “smuggled” into the store room at his local library.

“After I had my first session and told my life story, my counsellor was crying,” Tom said.

“But it was the first time anyone had ever listened to my story, and that experience of counsellor probably saved my life.”

This experience inspired Tom to take up counselling himself, but as he was completing his placement work experience, he realised that the demand for mental health support is now so high that local services cannot keep up.

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“If you are a young person needing counselling and under 18, you can be on a two-year waiting list,” he admitted.

“People are on these waiting lists and get six sessions, sometimes the therapy they get doesn’t work for them.”

One of the therapy rooms at The Empathy Project. (Image: The Empathy Project) Tom saw services being overstretched and wanted to make a change, pooling resources with other counsellors he was training with to attempt to fix the “completely broken situation.”

The result was the entirely self-funded Empathy Project, which provides a dedicated counselling service with unlimited sessions and no waiting list.

“If a parent calls up saying that their child is self-harming, we will have a session booked in within the next week,” Tom said as an example.

The project also offers a "community fund," which provides the same counselling service at discounted rates for those who cannot afford it.

A second therapy room within its Ocean Village office and the not-for-profit organisation celebrates a year anniversary in April.