Karen Spilsbury, NCPS

Karen Spilsbury is a counsellor working in the United Kingdom with eight years of professional experience. She supports people facing stress, anxiety, addictions, trauma and abuse, low self-esteem and major life changes. Karen presents herself as someone who values each person’s strengths and personal story. She encourages people who are nervous about starting therapy and acknowledges that first steps take courage.

Her approach is practical and down-to-earth. She uses methods such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Client-Centred Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and hypnotherapy to help people manage feelings and build skills. Sessions typically focus on understanding what matters to the client and finding realistic steps to cope better day to day.

Karen pays attention to attachment and abandonment issues, codependency, communication and commitment concerns. She also works with people experiencing dissociation, domestic violence, divorce and separation, and those navigating neurodiversity such as autism and Asperger Syndrome. Issues like coping with natural or human-caused disaster, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder and co-morbidity are within her scope of focus.

Her practice emphasises collaboration. Clients can expect to set goals together and try techniques suited to their situation. Karen aims to help people notice small changes that add up to clearer thinking and steadier coping.

If you want to begin, she asks that you use the site’s Start Therapy process to match and schedule a session according to availability.

How therapeutic approaches guide online work

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, and learn actions that match their values. It can be useful for anxiety, stress and coping with life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on the links between thoughts, feelings and behaviour and uses practical exercises to change unhelpful patterns. It is often used for anxiety, low mood and addictive behaviours.

Finding the right approach is part of the therapy process. Karen will work together with each person to choose methods that fit their goals and preferences. That may mean trying different techniques across sessions and agreeing practical goals as therapy progresses.

For online work, please confirm the session formats available before booking since the biography does not list them. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy day, allow quieter surroundings if needed, and remove travel time so a short check-in can be possible during a break. Registered or accredited professionals often adapt ACT and CBT exercises for remote sessions, using homework tasks and brief skills practice between meetings to help progress.