Barbara Engels
Compassionate attachment-focused psychodynamic counsellor
About Barbara
Barbara Engels uses attachment-focused and psychodynamic approaches to help people untangle relationship patterns and personal struggles. She is a BACP-registered counsellor with 18 years of experience based in the United Kingdom. She speaks English and German and can run sessions in either language.
Barbara draws on attachment-based ideas to look at how early bonds shape current relationships. She helps clients notice repeating patterns and try different ways of connecting. Psychodynamic work is used to bring hidden feelings and past experiences into view so they can be understood and shifted.
Background and approach
People come to Barbara with worries about stress, anxiety, depression, grief and recovery from trauma and abuse. She also supports those dealing with self-esteem, loneliness, intimacy-related issues, and the strain of workplace pressures. Parenting, relationship tensions, divorce and communication problems are other common concerns she addresses.
Her background includes long-term roles with The Relate Counselling Service and an autism-specialist charity, where she offered autism-informed counselling and support for parents. That experience informs her work with attachment issues, autism and Asperger syndrome, and multicultural concerns. Sessions are shaped around each person’s needs and goals.
Barbara emphasises respect, sensitivity and practical steps that can be tried between sessions. She aims to create a steady, calm space for people to talk things through and discover clearer ways forward.
What Barbara works with
How Barbara works
Listed by Barbara among the ways they work.
Listed by Barbara among the ways they work.
Sessions & fees
Attachment and Psychodynamic Work Online
Barbara uses attachment-based work to explore how early relationships shape current patterns. That approach focuses on connection styles and helps people change repeated ways of relating that cause pain.She also uses psychodynamic therapy to bring underlying feelings and past experiences into view. This helps when worries, grief or long-standing anxieties keep resurfacing without obvious cause.
Choosing the best approach is part of the work together. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences and what feels most useful, then adapt sessions as understanding grows. Clients and therapist decide collaboratively which methods to try and when to adjust them.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone, live chat or text-based messaging to suit different needs. Video calls work well when visual contact helps the conversation. Phone sessions can be a simpler option when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Chat and messaging are useful for brief updates, written reflection, or when typing feels easier than speaking.
These formats make it easier to fit therapy around work, family life and travel, and let people try different ways of connecting until they find what works best. Registered and accredited professionals provide these kinds of online options to support practical access to therapy.
| Session length | Typically 50 minutes |
|---|---|
| Client ages | Adults, 18 and over |
| Fees | Subscription via BetterHelp, cancel anytime |
| Insurance | Not billed directly |
Questions people ask
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Areas of focus
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Self esteem
Also listed
- ADHD
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Self-love
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 18 years
- Registered with
- BACP
- Languages
- English, German
