About Toby
Toby Messer is a psychotherapist who combines practical and reflective approaches to help people manage stress and anxiety. He uses clear, structured tools alongside deeper exploration to help clients make changes that matter now. He works in English and is based in the United Kingdom with 11 years of experience, holding the NCPS credential.
Toby focuses on understanding why patterns of feeling and behaviour keep repeating. He helps people spot unhelpful thinking, test new ways of coping, and build small habits that reduce distress.
Background and approach
Sessions are direct and aimed at usable steps rather than long explanations. He draws on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to identify thinking and behaviour patterns, and on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to clarify values and make choices that fit those values. Attachment-based ideas are used when relationships and early experiences shape current reactions.
The aim is practical change grounded in personal meaning. Toby also supports people facing grief, relationship strain, addiction, sleep and eating struggles, career pressures, and compassion fatigue. He adapts techniques for issues linked to trauma, ADHD, bipolar mood challenges, and sexual diversity.
Work is paced to each person’s needs and energy. Sessions can be held by video, phone, live chat, or messaging. Toby encourages a collaborative process where goals are set together and reviewed.
He uses straightforward tasks between sessions to keep progress moving.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online work
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people notice unhelpful thoughts and choose actions that fit their values. It is useful when anxiety or low mood make it hard to do the things that matter. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, focuses on spotting and testing unhelpful thinking and behaviour patterns and then practising alternatives. It is often used for anxiety, depression, and sleep or eating difficulties.Finding the right approach is part of the therapy journey. The therapist will work with each person to choose methods that suit their goals, pace and preferences. That choice happens together and can change as work progresses, mixing skills training with reflective conversations as needed.
Online sessions are offered by video, phone, live chat or text-based messaging to fit different schedules and needs. Video calls let people work face to face for longer sessions, phone sessions use less bandwidth and can be easier to fit into a break, and messaging or live chat can support brief check-ins or stepped progress between meetings. These options make therapy more flexible and easier to keep up with in everyday life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Existential Therapy
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Systemic Therapy
- Experience
- 11 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English
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