Sharon McHugh
Healing from anxiety and difficult upbringings
About Sharon
Sharon McHugh is a counsellor who helps people move past anxiety and the effects of a difficult upbringing. She works with clients to heal from trauma and to find more stability in day-to-day life. Sessions are led by the client and focus on whatever feels most important that week.
Sharon uses an open and empathetic style. Early sessions cover goals and what the client wants from counselling, then a simple plan is made together.
Background and approach
She asks questions to understand someone’s experience and to help make sense of repeating patterns. Her background includes work in independent practice and external agencies. Over seven years she has focused on anxiety, trauma, low self-esteem and coping strategies people developed to stay safe in early life.
Sharon notices how those strategies can later cause emptiness, people-pleasing and uncertainty about identity. Sharon draws on a range of approaches to fit each person’s needs. She holds a British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP) membership and formal training that includes integrative counselling, cognitive behavioural methods and hypnotherapy.
Training is described in plain terms during early sessions. Clients can expect a calm, non-judgemental space where they can speak openly. Sharon aims to help people recognise patterns, find practical ways to manage symptoms and build a clearer sense of who they are.
She works at the client’s pace and adjusts the plan as progress is made.
What Sharon works with
How Sharon works
Listed by Sharon among the ways they work.
Listed by Sharon among the ways they work.
Listed by Sharon among the ways they work.
Listed by Sharon among the ways they work.
Listed by Sharon among the ways they work.
Listed by Sharon among the ways they work.
Sessions & fees
Approaches that suit online therapy
Client-Centred Therapy focuses on the person's own goals and feelings. The counsellor listens, reflects and helps the client to lead each session, which can be useful for issues like low self-esteem and life changes.Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, looks at thoughts and behaviours that keep problems going. It uses practical exercises and small experiments between sessions to reduce anxiety, panic and unhelpful habits.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, or DBT, teaches skills for managing intense emotions and improving relationships. It offers tools for impulsivity, self-regulation and handling distress in the moment.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Sharon will discuss options and decide with the client which methods to try based on their goals, needs and preferences. That means sessions can change if something else would fit better over time.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat and text messaging. Video helps replicate face-to-face contact, phone calls can be easier when bandwidth is limited, and live chat or messaging suits quick check-ins or people who prefer typed conversation. These formats make it easier to fit sessions around work, family and travel while keeping therapeutic continuity.
| 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
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- First responder issues
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 7 years
- Registered with
- BACP
- Languages
- English
