Virginia Bowley, BACP

Virginia Bowley is a counsellor with 24 years' experience in a range of settings. She has worked in private practice, at a further education college and with a national bereavement charity. She is a BACP counsellor and draws on a long background in nursing and rehabilitation case management when supporting people through change.

She keeps sessions focused on what someone needs now. Conversations are practical and paced to the person. She helps people talk through grief, loss and life transitions, and supports those managing anxiety, depression and relationship problems.

Her years as a rehabilitation case manager involved helping people adjust after catastrophic injury. That work sharpened her skills in coping strategies, adapting to new realities, and working with long-term change. She has also worked with adoption and foster care issues, attachment concerns, and intellectual disability.

Virginia uses client-centred ways of working, so sessions follow the person's priorities. She also uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which looks at thinking and behaviour patterns and teaches new coping skills. She continues monthly supervision and follows the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists code of ethics.

She enjoys swimming, walking, cycling and reading outside of work. For anyone wanting to start, the usual step is to complete the short matching questionnaire and schedule a session according to availability.

Therapeutic approaches and online support

Virginia works with client-centred therapy, which means the session follows the person’s concerns and pace. This approach is about listening, reflecting and helping someone identify their own solutions, useful for grief, life changes and relationship worries.

She also uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, commonly called CBT. CBT looks at how thoughts, feelings and actions link together and teaches practical techniques to reduce anxiety, depression and unhelpful behaviours. It is often used when someone wants tools to manage mood or stress.

Finding the right approach is a joint process. Virginia will discuss what feels most helpful and adapt methods to the person’s goals and preferences. She combines listening with practical strategies and checks in regularly to see what is working.

The biography records training in online counselling but does not list specific session formats. Please confirm the current session options before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life, save travel time and allow follow-ups from different locations. It can also allow shorter check-ins when that suits someone’s schedule.