Maria Howell
Compassionate, practical counselling for everyday struggles
About Maria
Maria Howell offers calm, practical support for people facing stress, anxiety and life changes. She is a BACP counsellor with seven years' experience helping people untangle difficult feelings. Her approach is straightforward and grounded in everyday language to make starting therapy less daunting.
She aims to create a conversational space where clients can say what they think and feel without judgement. Sessions focus on identifying unhelpful patterns and finding small, workable steps forward.
Background and approach
Maria encourages honest discussion about relationships, identity and pressures at home or work. Her background includes work in a community counselling service based in South Wales that emphasises accessible care. That experience brought a range of presenting concerns, from mood difficulties to trauma, addictions and questions about intimacy and identity.
The text of her practice reflects a practical, integrative style rather than a single school of thought. Maria listens for what matters most to each person and adapts the pace accordingly. Therapy can cover coping skills for anxiety and sleep, ways to manage anger, grief work, or thinking through career and parenting stresses.
She also provides support for people navigating issues around body image, sexual expression and neurodiversity. Conversations are plain and focused, with suggested action between sessions when useful. People will leave sessions with clearer options, small experiments to try, and a sense of progress even in slow steps.
What Maria works with
Sessions & fees
How Maria adapts therapeutic approaches for online work
Maria uses evidence-based therapeutic techniques that focus on practical change. One common approach helps people recognise and change unhelpful thinking and behaviour patterns by trying small experiments between sessions; it suits anxiety, low mood and problematic routines. Another approach aims to understand early attachment and relationship patterns to improve communication and intimacy, which can be useful for people struggling with abandonment, trust or commitment issues.Finding the right way of working is a collaborative process. Maria will discuss different methods with each person and agree on a plan that fits their needs, goals and preferences. The approach can change over time as new priorities emerge or different issues surface.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to connect. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues, phone sessions need less bandwidth and can fit into a short break, live chat is useful for brief check-ins, and text messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These formats make it easier to attend from different locations and arrange appointments around work, family or study commitments.
| 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
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
- Experience
- 7 years
- Registered with
- BACP
- Languages
- English
