Denise Richards, BACP

Denise Richards offers a calm, straightforward place to talk when life feels overwhelming. She greets people with a down-to-earth approach and focuses on helping them find practical ways to cope. Denise speaks plainly and listens closely to understand what matters most to each person.

She draws on six years of experience and holds a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) membership. Denise trained through a sequence of humanistic integrative counselling qualifications, including a post-graduate diploma. That background means she blends different ideas to match the needs of each person rather than using a single fixed method.

Sessions tend to focus on what is most urgent to the client - stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship and parenting concerns are common starting points. Denise also supports people coping with grief, eating and food-related difficulties, life transitions and issues around self-esteem and purpose. She aims to make things easier to understand and manage, not more complicated.

Her practical experience includes work with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, people affected by domestic abuse, trafficked women, disadvantaged young people and school-aged children. She has also run counselling in low-cost community settings and private practice. That variety informs a flexible, person-focused style.

In early sessions Denise helps people set clear, realistic goals. She combines listening with techniques drawn from client-centred, cognitive behavioural and psychodynamic ideas to help unpick patterns and try new ways of coping. The work is collaborative and paced to the person's needs.

Approaches and online counselling options

Client-centred therapy focuses on the person's own experience and aims to create a respectful, non-judgemental space where they can be heard and explore what matters. This approach helps with self-esteem, relationships and deciding what steps to take next.

Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings and actions. It uses practical exercises to try different ways of thinking and behaving, which can be helpful for anxiety, low mood and stress.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. Denise will talk with each person about goals and preferences and help choose and adapt methods that fit their needs. The choice of approach is collaborative and may change as progress is made.

Online sessions are offered via video calls, phone, live chat or text-based messaging. Video works well for face-to-face conversation and visual cues, phone is useful when bandwidth is low, live chat suits shorter check-ins and text messages allow ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to fit counselling around work, family and other commitments, and to continue therapy from different locations when needed.