About Madeleine
Madeleine Heffernan is a counsellor with eight years' experience helping people tackle stress, anxiety, phobias and relationship problems. She works with depression, trauma and abuse, addictions, grief and intimacy issues, along with practical concerns like parenting, career changes and coping with life transitions. Madeleine is BACP accredited and based in the United Kingdom.
She offers straightforward, respectful support aimed at small steps and practical change. Her style adapts to each person's needs.
Background and approach
Sessions can include listening, talking through life stories, and noticing patterns that keep problems going. Madeleine blends psychodynamic ideas - which look at how past experiences shape current feelings - with cognitive behavioural techniques that focus on unhelpful thoughts and behaviours. She also uses attachment-based ideas to help people understand relationship patterns, and mindfulness to build awareness and reduce stress.
Where helpful, she suggests tasks to try between sessions to practise new ways of coping. Madeleine encourages a kinder internal voice and works with people to strengthen self-compassion. Madeleine explains things plainly and invites clients to be active partners in the work.
Her aim is to help clients feel clearer about their choices and more able to handle difficult emotions. Sessions are offered by video, phone, live chat or text messaging to suit different needs. Initial steps involve a short matching questionnaire and scheduling a time that fits the client's routine.
Online formats mean conversations can happen from wherever someone is based in the United Kingdom, using the session type that suits them best.
How her approaches translate to online therapy
Attachment-based work focuses on how early relationship patterns shape current emotional responses and interpersonal dynamics; online sessions can help people notice those patterns and practise different ways of connecting. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) breaks down distress into thoughts, feelings and behaviours and gives practical tools to change unhelpful cycles; it works well in video or phone sessions where worksheets and exercises can be shared. Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps people name and work with core emotions to improve how they relate to others, and can be used through talking and guided reflection in an online setting.Finding the right approach is part of the process. Madeleine discusses goals and preferences with each client and chooses techniques together. That collaborative stance means the plan can change as the work progresses, with the client guiding what feels most helpful.
Online therapy offers flexibility for different lifestyles. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation, phone sessions need less bandwidth, and live chat or text messaging can suit shorter check-ins and people who prefer writing. These options make it easier to fit therapy around work, caring responsibilities or mobility limits while still drawing on the therapeutic approaches described above.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 8 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English
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