Paula Appleton
Calm, practical counselling for life’s pressures
About Paula
Paula Appleton is a counsellor with 14 years' experience supporting people through a wide range of life challenges. She practices in the United Kingdom and combines different therapeutic approaches to suit each person she meets. Paula communicates in English and can use American Sign Language for Deaf or hard-of-hearing clients at a BSL NVQ Level 6 standard.
Paula offers straightforward help for common difficulties such as anxiety, stress and low mood.
Background and approach
She also works with trauma and abuse, addictions, grief and problems with sleep or eating. Clients come with career concerns, parenting strain, intimacy issues, and challenges linked to neurodiversity or chronic health conditions. Her style is practical and person-focused.
Sessions aim to clarify what matters to the client, build useful skills and test small changes between meetings. Techniques can include noticing thoughts, learning grounding skills, and creating step-by-step plans to reach personal goals. Paula also supports those dealing with abandonment, adoption and foster-care histories, attachment difficulties, and care-giver stress.
She can help with complex presentations such as co-morbidity, bipolar concerns, and people managing long-term illness alongside emotional needs. She works within the standards of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and holds NCPS recognition. Therapy is tailored, and Paula explains options so people can choose what fits them best.
What Paula works with
How Paula works
Listed by Paula among the ways they work.
Listed by Paula among the ways they work.
Listed by Paula among the ways they work.
Listed by Paula among the ways they work.
Listed by Paula among the ways they work.
Listed by Paula among the ways they work.
Sessions & fees
How Paula's approaches work online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, and then focus on small actions that reflect what matters most. It can be useful for anxiety, low mood and life transitions. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy looks at the link between thoughts, feelings and behaviours and teaches clear steps to test new ways of responding to worries and unhelpful patterns.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Paula will talk with each person about their goals and preferences and suggest which methods to try first. She adapts techniques during sessions so the plan stays practical and relevant to everyday life.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone appointments, live chat or text-based messaging to fit different needs. Video calls work well for longer therapy conversations, phone sessions can suit a quick check-in or when bandwidth is limited, and messaging or live chat are handy for short updates or when typing feels easier than speaking. These options make it simpler to fit therapy around work, caring duties or travel and allow continuity when schedules change.
| 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
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hearing impaired
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counselling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centred Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Gottman Method
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Systemic Therapy
- Experience
- 14 years
- Registered with
- BACP, NCPS
- Languages
- English, American Sign Language
