Valerie Stanley-Brooks
Experienced integrative counsellor focused on practical change
About Valerie
Valerie Stanley-Brooks is a counsellor and member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). She has 25 years of experience offering one-to-one and couple work in the United Kingdom. Valerie uses straightforward, practical ways of working so people can make steady progress.
Her approach is integrative and client-centred. She draws on multiple methods such as cognitive behavioural techniques, psychodynamic ideas and trauma-focused work. Sessions are aimed at helping people name what is happening, try new ways of responding, and build everyday coping skills.
Background and approach
Valerie supports people with a wide range of concerns. Common areas include stress, anxiety, grief, depression, addictions and relationship or intimacy-related issues. She also works with career pressures, parenting strains, sleep and eating difficulties, and compassion fatigue.
Additional focus areas include adoption and foster care, abandonment, autism and Asperger syndrome, blended family issues and family of origin concerns. Valerie also helps with communication problems, commitment worries and fatherhood issues where relevant to the individual. Sessions typically combine talking, practical exercises and homework when useful.
The work can include short-term solution-focused tasks or longer explorations of patterns and past experience. Valerie aims to tailor the pace and mix of work to each person’s needs. She has worked in educational, therapeutic and voluntary settings across her career.
Valerie offers sessions in English and accepts international clients, with online formats available to match different schedules and circumstances.
What Valerie works with
How Valerie works
Listed by Valerie among the ways they work.
Listed by Valerie among the ways they work.
Listed by Valerie among the ways they work.
Listed by Valerie among the ways they work.
Listed by Valerie among the ways they work.
Sessions & fees
How Valerie’s approaches translate to online therapy
Client-centred work focuses on the person’s own goals and pace. In this approach the therapist listens, reflects and gently guides conversations so the person can decide what matters and try new ways of coping. It suits people who want a collaborative, supportive space to think things through.Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, looks at links between thoughts, feelings and behaviours. It often includes practical exercises, simple experiments and steps to reduce anxiety or change unhelpful habits. This approach can be useful for stress, panic, low mood and sleep or eating difficulties.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The counsellor will talk through options and agree a plan that fits the person’s needs, goals and preferences. That plan may mix short-term tasks with deeper exploration over time in a collaborative way.
Online sessions offer practical flexibility. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation when a longer session is needed, while phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text-based messaging make brief check-ins and ongoing support possible between longer sessions. These options help people fit therapy around work, care duties and daily life.
| 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
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Registered with
- BACP
- Languages
- English
