Thoughtful, professional counselling for people living in Bath and the wider Somerset area. A private, confidential space to explore what matters most, from the comfort of your own home.
Bath is one of the most beautiful cities in England. The honey-coloured Georgian crescents, the ancient Roman baths, the green sweep of the surrounding hills. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a place that millions visit every year to admire and photograph. But living in Bath is very different from visiting it, and behind the elegant facades, the reality of daily life is far more complicated than the tourist brochures suggest.
I work with clients in Bath who describe a particular kind of pressure that comes with living in a place so associated with beauty, culture and gentility. There can be an unspoken expectation that life here should feel graceful and measured, that your problems should somehow be smaller because your surroundings are lovely. Of course, emotional pain does not work like that. Anxiety, depression, trauma and relationship difficulties feel just as raw in a Georgian townhouse as they do anywhere else. In our sessions, you do not need to minimise what you are going through. You can bring the full, unpolished truth of your experience and know it will be met with genuine warmth and understanding.
One of the things that makes Bath distinctive is its size. With a population of around 90,000, it has the cultural richness of a much larger city but the social dynamics of a small town. Everyone seems to know everyone, particularly within professional circles, parent networks and social groups. While this connectedness can be wonderful, it also creates challenges when it comes to seeking help for personal difficulties.
Many of my Bath clients have told me they would feel uncomfortable walking into a therapist's office in the city centre, worried about bumping into someone they know in the waiting room or being seen entering the building. This concern is not trivial. In a close-knit community, privacy matters enormously, and the fear of being judged or gossiped about can be enough to prevent someone from ever seeking support.
Online therapy solves this problem completely. Your sessions happen in your own private space, on your own terms. Nobody needs to know you are in therapy unless you choose to tell them. And because I am based in North West London rather than in Bath itself, there is a helpful layer of separation between your therapeutic world and your everyday social world. You can be completely candid without worrying about any overlap.
Bath is home to two universities, and the student population brings a distinctive energy to the city. But university life, for all its excitement, can also be a profoundly challenging time. The transition from home to independence, the academic pressure, the social expectations, the financial strain, the process of figuring out who you are when the structures of school and family are no longer around you. These are significant developmental tasks, and they can surface emotional difficulties that may have been simmering for years.
I work with students and recent graduates who are dealing with a wide range of issues, from anxiety and depression to the effects of childhood experiences they are only now beginning to understand. University counselling services do vital work, but they are often stretched, with limited sessions available and long waiting lists during peak times. Online therapy with a private practitioner offers continuity and depth that university services may not be able to provide. And because sessions continue through holidays and breaks, your therapeutic progress is not interrupted when the term ends.
If you are a parent of a student in Bath and you are concerned about their wellbeing, online therapy can also be a helpful way to support them. It removes the barrier of having to find and travel to a local therapist, and it gives them a consistent, confidential relationship with someone outside their immediate social and academic world.
Bath's economy is heavily shaped by tourism and the heritage industry. For many residents, this means working in hospitality, retail or cultural organisations where the pressure to present a polished, welcoming face is constant. The emotional labour of service work is often underestimated, and when your livelihood depends on maintaining a cheerful exterior regardless of how you feel inside, the disconnect between your public self and your private reality can become deeply wearing.
Beyond the workplace, living in a tourist city creates its own subtle stresses. The crowds during peak season, the rising cost of housing driven partly by holiday lets and second homes, the sense that the city sometimes prioritises visitors over the people who actually live and work there. These frustrations may seem minor in isolation, but over time they contribute to a feeling of being squeezed, of your home not quite belonging to you.
In therapy, we can explore these feelings and the deeper patterns they connect to. Perhaps the sense of not being prioritised echoes something from earlier in your life. Perhaps the exhaustion of performing for others reflects a longstanding pattern of putting everyone else's needs before your own. My integrative approach, drawing on psychodynamic therapy, CBT, EMDR, IFS-informed work and psychosynthesis, allows us to work at whatever level feels most useful, from practical coping strategies to deeper emotional exploration.
I am a BACP accredited counsellor and trained EMDR practitioner, working exclusively online from my base in North West London. All sessions are £70 for 50 minutes, making this an affordable option for professional, BACP accredited online therapy, with no additional charges. I offer a warm, thoughtful approach that takes your individual circumstances seriously and adapts to what you need, rather than applying a generic model.
I can support you with:
Whether you have been thinking about therapy for a while or the idea is entirely new to you, I am here to make the process as straightforward and welcoming as possible. There is no right way to start, and you do not need to have your thoughts neatly organised before our first session. You just need to show up, and we will take it from there.
If you are in Bath or the surrounding Somerset area and considering therapy, I would be glad to hear from you. Book a session and let us explore what support could look like for you.
Book a Session"The most beautiful places cannot protect us from pain. But they can remind us that beauty and struggle have always existed side by side, and that both deserve to be honoured."