About Karen
Karen Spilsbury is a counsellor with eight years of professional experience in the United Kingdom. She holds NCPS, which is listed as her professional credential. Karen focuses on helping people who are feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, addiction or past trauma.
She also supports those facing low self-esteem and big life changes. Karen works in a straightforward, respectful way. She treats clients as the experts in their own story and looks for strengths to build on.
Background and approach
Sessions are practical and paced to the person, so steps are small and manageable. Her background includes work with addiction and domestic violence issues, dissociation and attachment concerns. She is experienced supporting people coping with divorce, separation and difficult transitions.
Karen also has experience with autism and Asperger Syndrome and with mood regulation challenges such as Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder. Her therapeutic toolkit draws on Somatic approaches, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), along with client-centred principles. That mix lets her combine body-awareness, practical skills and values-based planning when it helps.
Karen aims to create a calm, supportive space for honest conversation. She encourages gradual change and helps people find ways to cope that fit their life. Taking the first step is often the hardest part and she acknowledges that courage.
How different approaches work online and in your body
Somatic therapy focuses on bodily awareness and how physical sensations link to feelings and memories. It can help when talk alone feels stuck by bringing attention to breath, posture and physical responses to stress. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people clarify what matters to them and take small actions toward those values, even when difficult thoughts or feelings are present. It is useful for anxiety, motivation and life changes. Client-Centred Therapy prioritises listening and empathy, giving people space to make sense of their experience at their own pace and build confidence.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences and what feels manageable, and adapt methods as work progresses. Some sessions may lean more on body-awareness, others on practical skills or values work depending on what each person needs.
Online therapy offers flexible options such as video calls, phone sessions, live chat and text-based messaging. These formats let people fit therapy around work, family and daily life, and make it easier to maintain continuity when schedules change. Many clients find the range of online tools helpful for practising techniques between sessions and for staying connected when in-person meetings are difficult.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 8 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English