About Claire
Claire Bottomley is a counsellor who helps people feeling overwhelmed by anxiety, stress or life changes. She speaks plainly and listens carefully to what matters most, helping people find ways to cope and move forward. Claire works in a conversational, person-focused way.
Sessions are aimed at understanding how past events affect daily life now. She concentrates on practical steps as well as exploring feelings, so people leave with tools they can try between meetings.
Background and approach
Her background includes five years of practice and registration with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, BACP. She trained at degree level in therapeutic counselling and later completed further study in cognitive behavioural psychotherapy. Claire has also worked with trauma-related difficulties and distressing memories.
In sessions she blends approaches rather than using a single method. That means she might draw on cognitive behavioural techniques to spot unhelpful thoughts, and more exploratory work to look at patterns that began earlier in life. The plan is shaped around each person’s goals and pace.
People commonly bring concerns such as anxiety, panic, grief, relationship strain, parenting stress, trauma, sleeping problems or low self-esteem. Claire also supports those facing major changes like divorce, work transitions or the impact of addiction on life. She aims to make therapy straightforward and useful for day-to-day living.
Approaches that suit online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on noticing difficult thoughts and feelings and living in line with personal values. It helps when anxiety or avoidance get in the way of everyday life. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, CBT, works on spotting and changing unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviours to reduce symptoms like panic, worry and sleep disruption. Client-Centred Therapy puts the person’s own experience at the heart of the work and uses listening and reflection to build understanding and confidence.Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the process. Claire will talk with each person about their goals and preferences and together decide which methods to try. That collaborative planning can be revisited as therapy progresses to make sure sessions remain useful and relevant.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility. Video calls let people meet face to face when travel is difficult, phone sessions can be used when bandwidth is limited, and live chat or text messaging suit shorter check-ins or days when writing feels easier. These options help fit therapy around work, family and other commitments while keeping a consistent therapeutic relationship with a registered professional.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Somatization
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 5 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English
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