About Shirley
Shirley Banton is a BACP-registered counsellor with 11 years' experience working with people who feel overwhelmed, stuck or emotionally exhausted. She offers a calm, steady presence and prefers a reflective pace that suits each person. Shirley describes her work as collaborative and respectful of the client’s timing.
She bases her practice on client-centred principles combined with trauma-aware care. Sessions aim to help people make sense of relational patterns, rebuild confidence, and develop clearer boundaries.
Background and approach
Shirley will adapt techniques to the issues a person brings rather than use a one-size-fits-all method. Many people choose her for help with anxiety, stress, grief, or the effects of abusive relationships and coercive control. She also supports those facing life transitions, burnout, identity struggles, and difficulties with intimacy or self-worth.
Practical coping strategies are offered alongside space for deeper reflection. Her background includes extensive experience with survivors of domestic violence and long-term relational trauma, and over 20 years working in further and higher education. That experience informs her understanding of pressures faced by students and educators.
Shirley works online, which can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life. She encourages people who prefer a thoughtful, steady approach rather than quick fixes to consider her practice. The starting point is always the client’s goals and what matters most to them.
How Shirley’s approaches work online
Client-Centred Therapy focuses on the person’s own experience and priorities. The therapist listens without judgement and helps the client find their own solutions, which can be helpful for anxiety and self-esteem issues.Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, looks at patterns of thought and behaviour that keep problems going. It offers practical tools and experiments you can try between sessions to reduce anxiety and improve sleep or mood.
Shirley treats selecting an approach as a joint process. She will talk with each person about their goals and preferences and then suggest ways of working that suit those aims. The method can be adjusted as therapy progresses so it remains relevant and useful.
Online sessions via video calls let people meet face to face without travel, while phone sessions are useful when bandwidth is limited or a simpler check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging suit brief updates, ongoing coaching-style contact, or when writing helps someone reflect. These options give flexibility to fit sessions around work, study and other commitments.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 11 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English
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