Dorcas Upshall

Dorcas Upshall is a counsellor who puts each person's goals at the heart of sessions. She helps people untangle stress, anxiety, relationship struggles and issues around food and body image. Her approach aims to help people feel more like themselves and build emotional confidence through steady, practical work.

She focuses on understanding the patterns that keep someone stuck. That might mean looking at thoughts that feed anxiety, behaviours that keep problems going, or past experiences that still affect day-to-day life. Sessions are collaborative and paced to each person’s needs.

Dorcas has worked in domestic abuse services, women’s centres and LGBTQ+ charities, and has experience in addiction and recovery work. She has also worked in pastoral care in schools and with adult and young person special needs provisions, and previously taught for over ten years. These roles have shaped how she notices resilience and difference in each person she meets.

In practice she brings together client-centred ways of listening with cognitive and systemic ideas to help people make changes. She describes herself as kink-aware and comfortable discussing a range of relationship structures. Her training shows BACP, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

People often come for help with grief, self-esteem, anger, trauma, ADHD and life changes. She also supports those facing compassion fatigue, addiction, intimacy concerns and issues linked to identity and sexuality. Work proceeds at a steady, supportive pace chosen with the person in the room.

How Dorcas blends talking therapies for online work

Client-Centred Therapy puts the person’s experience first and focuses on listening and understanding. It helps when someone needs space to make sense of feelings, identity or relationship questions. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) looks at links between thoughts, feelings and actions and offers practical steps to shift unhelpful patterns; it can be useful for anxiety, low mood and some eating-related behaviours. Internal Family Systems invites people to notice different parts of themselves and to work with those parts with curiosity, which can help with trauma, shame or persistent self-criticism.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. Dorcas will talk with each person about what feels most helpful and adapt methods as goals and needs change. The process is collaborative and paced to the individual rather than following a fixed plan.

The profile does not list specific session formats, so please confirm current options before booking. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions around life commitments, reduce travel time and allow steady check-ins even when schedules are busy. Some formats also allow shorter or phone-based check-ins when that works better for a particular week. Registered and accredited professionals can use these options to help people continue therapy alongside work, study and family life.