Trainee Counsellor – Katie

Qualifications & Training

• CPCAB Level 4 Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling — Integrative (2025–2027, in progress, Year 1)
• CPCAB Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Skills (2024–2025)
• CPCAB Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills (2023–2024)
• Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Mental Health First Aid and Mental Health Advocacy in the Workplace (2023)
• Student Member of the BACP (Membership No. 01039438)
• Fit to practise certificate held

Katie brings a rare quality to her counselling work — a person who has sat with profound loss, found her own way through it, and now brings that hard-won understanding to others with openness, empathy and care.

About Katie

Katie is a Trainee Integrative Counsellor in the first year of her CPCAB Level 4 Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling. Her training is integrative with a strong person-centred foundation, drawing on CBT, psychodynamic theory, gestalt, existential therapy and transactional analysis, and informed throughout by frameworks of loss, bereavement and relational change.

Katie’s path to counselling is rooted in lived experience. She spent five years at a publishing House, where she specialised in promoting self-help, philosophy and health titles — work that sparked a growing conviction that she wanted to be more directly involved in supporting people, not simply promoting the tools. Two sudden bereavements during her time there — both colleagues who died young, brought her into contact with counselling for the first time, and showed her its lasting impact. These experiences are not background detail. They are the foundation of a practitioner who understands, at depth, what it means to sit with grief and loss.

Katie’s Philosophy

“My goal is for clients to feel genuinely understood — to be accompanied in their struggles, and to grow in themselves as a result of our work together. I want to help people feel heard in a way that creates real and lasting change.

Katie is particularly drawn to existential and grief-informed approaches — ways of working that take seriously the weight of loss, change and the big questions of what it means to be alive. She holds a deep belief in the long-term, ripple effect that counselling can have on a person’s life, shaped by her own first experience of therapy and what it made possible for her. Her integrative training means she brings a flexible, whole-person perspective to every client, adapting her approach to what is most useful in the room.

What Katie Can Help With

Grief, loss & bereavement

• Bereavement and the loss of a loved one
• Sudden, unexpected or traumatic loss
• Grief following suicide loss
• Loss through redundancy, relationship breakdown or significant life change
• Anticipatory grief and supporting those facing serious illness
• Existential questions that arise from loss and change

Anxiety & workplace wellbeing

• Anxiety, including work-related stress and burnout
• Existential anxiety and questions of meaning and purpose
• Imposter syndrome and confidence
• Navigating career transitions and significant change
• Workplace pressure and performance anxiety

Mental health & personal development

• Low mood and depression
• Self-esteem and self-worth
• Relationship difficulties and interpersonal patterns
• Identity and personal growth
• Processing difficult or painful life experiences

Katie has a particular depth of understanding around grief, bereavement and existential concerns, and brings personal as well as professional insight to this work. She is especially drawn to supporting people navigating loss of any kind — whether the loss of a person, a role, a relationship or a sense of who they are.

Therapeutic Approach

Katie works integratively with a strong person-centred foundation. She draws on a range of theoretical frameworks and adapts her approach to what she believes will be most helpful for each individual client. Her core modalities include:

• Person-centred therapy — genuine warmth, empathy and unconditional acceptance at the heart of the relationship
• Psychodynamic therapy — attending to unconscious patterns, early experiences and the dynamics that play out between people
• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) — exploring how thoughts, beliefs and behaviours interact
• Gestalt therapy — present-moment awareness and attention to what is alive in the here-and-now
• Existential therapy — engaging with questions of meaning, mortality, freedom and belonging
• Transactional analysis — understanding relational patterns and the roles we play
• Loss and bereavement frameworks — informed approaches to grief in all its forms

Working with a Trainee Counsellor

As a trainee counsellor, Katie works under regular clinical supervision provided by Hope Therapy & Counselling Services. This means her work is closely supported and guided by experienced professionals. Katie’s background in relationship-centred professional work, her own sustained personal therapy, and the depth of lived experience she brings to questions of grief, loss and change mean she offers a quality of presence and understanding that goes beyond her stage of formal training. All trainee counsellors at Hope Therapy follow the same high standards of ethical practice, confidentiality and safeguarding as our qualified team members.

Format Options

Online sessions via secure videoconferencing (Zoom). Online therapy can be particularly helpful for those with busy schedules, mobility concerns, or who simply prefer the privacy and convenience of connecting from their own space. Katie offers sessions from wherever you are in England.