Paula De Souza, BACP

Paula De Souza is a BACP counsellor based in the United Kingdom with four years of professional experience. She focuses on helping people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, relationship and family concerns, grief, trauma and abuse, and struggles with self-esteem and eating issues. Her work also covers career challenges, compassion fatigue and the emotional impact of long-term health conditions.

Paula takes a person-centred approach that aims to follow each person's pace and priorities. That means she listens first, then helps clients make sense of their thoughts and feelings. Sessions often involve talking through recent events and past experiences to build clearer next steps.

She also draws on psychodynamic ideas to understand how early relationships and patterns may still affect day-to-day life. That can help people spot recurring themes and make different choices. Paula adapts methods to the needs of each person rather than using a single fixed style.

Her additional focus areas include attachment concerns, caregiving stress, chronic illness and body image issues. She is experienced supporting people facing divorce, separation and commitment worries, as well as those coping with ageing or cancer-related concerns.

Sessions are conducted in English and she accepts clients from outside the UK. Paula works with clients to strengthen coping strategies, improve communication, and plan practical steps for change. To begin, people complete a short matching questionnaire and then schedule according to therapist availability.

How Paula’s approaches translate to online therapy

Paula works primarily from a person-centred perspective, which means sessions focus on what matters to the person. The counsellor listens closely, reflects what is said, and helps clients identify next steps and coping strategies. This approach suits people who want to be heard and guided at their own pace.

She also uses psychodynamic ideas to look at how earlier relationships and patterns might influence current behaviour. In practice this can mean gently exploring recurring themes and memories to make sense of present difficulties and consider new ways of relating to oneself and others.

Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Paula will work with each person to decide which methods feel most helpful, based on their goals and preferences. That conversation often happens in the first few meetings and can change as therapy progresses.

If you are considering online work, check the current session options before booking since the biography does not list formats. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions into everyday life, reduce travel time, and allow regular check-ins that suit work and family schedules. It also lets some people choose shorter or audio-only meetings when that fits their needs better.