Gemma Pattison, BACP

Gemma Pattison is a counsellor based in the United Kingdom with eight years of professional experience. She works with people who are struggling with stress, anxiety, low mood and relationship difficulties. Gemma also supports those facing bereavement, trauma and different forms of abuse, and she acknowledges the courage it takes to begin therapy.

Gemma believes clients are the experts on their own lives and that everyone brings strengths to sessions. Her main approach is client-centred therapy, which means she follows each person’s priorities and adapts to their pace. She also draws on other methods when useful to offer practical tools and fresh ways of looking at problems.

People come to Gemma for help with a wide range of concerns. These include self-esteem, coping with life changes, addictions, parenting strains, caregiver stress, grieving, intimacy-related issues, sleep and eating difficulties, and work-related pressures. She also works with neurodiversity, attachment concerns, and areas such as adoption and foster care, ageing and geriatric issues, and sexuality-related topics.

In sessions she aims to create a non-judgemental space where clients can talk things through and try out new strategies. Gemma uses techniques from cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness alongside motivational interviewing and narrative ideas when these fit the client’s goals.

She offers sessions in English and accepts international clients. Prospective clients complete a short matching questionnaire to get started and then arrange sessions to suit their schedule.

How Gemma uses therapeutic approaches online

Attachment-based work focuses on relationships and how early bonds shape current patterns. It helps people notice repeating relationship habits and try different ways of connecting. Client-centred therapy gives the person space to lead sessions; the counsellor listens closely and reflects what matters to the client so they can make sense of their own experience. Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, offers practical techniques to identify unhelpful thinking and try small behavioural changes that reduce anxiety or low mood.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. Gemma will talk with each person about their goals and preferences and then suggest which methods to try. She treats this as a collaborative process and adjusts the plan if something isn’t working.

The biography lists video, telephone and chat as ways she communicates and says she actively responds to messages. If you prefer online sessions, confirm current formats before booking so you know what is possible. Online counselling can make it easier to fit appointments into a busy day, allow shorter check-ins by phone or chat, and remove travel time so people can focus more on what they want to work on.