About Summar
Summar Ali is a counsellor based in the United Kingdom with 11 years of experience. She supports people facing anxiety, stress, addiction, depression and a wide range of life challenges. Summar works in a calm, down-to-earth way and focuses on what will help day-to-day life feel more manageable.
She draws on practical approaches such as cognitive behavioural techniques and acceptance and commitment ideas to help people notice unhelpful patterns and try new ways of responding.
Background and approach
Attachment-based and client-centred ways of working shape how she builds trust and listens closely to each person’s experience. Her background includes roles in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, school counselling, drug and alcohol services, bereavement support and sexual trauma work.
She has also lectured at the University of Southampton and the Anna Freud Centre and teaches trainees who work in the NHS. Summar holds a BA in Counselling and Psychotherapy and a Postgraduate Certificate in Evidence Based Interventions for Children and Young People’s Mental Health.
She also has a Postgraduate Certificate in Supervisory Skills and a Higher Education Certificate in Academic Practice, with fellowship status. She has completed continuing professional development in the neurobiology of trauma and currently combines online practice with animal-assisted therapy. People who choose to work with her usually want a practical, compassionate approach that addresses both feelings and everyday routines.
How therapeutic approaches work online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings without being driven by them. It uses simple exercises to clarify values and build small actions that match what matters, which can help with anxiety and coping with life changes.Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early relationships shape current ways of connecting. It helps people understand patterns in relationships and try different responses to improve closeness and safety in relationships and intimacy concerns.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, life circumstances and preferences, then suggest ways of working. Together they will try methods that fit and adjust them over time if something does not feel helpful.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat and text messaging. Video suits a longer conversation and visual connection, phone can work when bandwidth is limited, live chat and text are useful for brief check-ins or when writing helps process thoughts. These options make it easier to fit sessions around work, family life and travel while keeping therapy consistent.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 11 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English
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