About Virginia
Virginia Bowley is an experienced counsellor with 24 years in the field. She trained as a nurse and later worked for many years as a rehabilitation case manager supporting people after catastrophic injuries. She is accredited by the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists, listed as BACP.
Her background includes six years with Cruse bereavement care and work in further education and independent practice. Those roles gave her a wide view of grief, loss and long-term adjustment.
How Virginia works
She has also completed training in online counselling to offer remote sessions. Virginia uses client-centred ways of working to make conversations feel straightforward and respectful. She also draws on cognitive behavioural techniques to help people spot unhelpful thinking and try new ways of coping.
Sessions are practical and aim to fit everyday pressures. She supports people facing stress, anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, grief and life changes. Other areas she addresses include addictions, anger, self-esteem, career concerns and bipolar-related issues.
She also works with challenges linked to adoption and foster care, ageing, attachment, autism and intellectual disability. Her professional routine includes monthly supervision and following the BACP code of ethics. Outside work she enjoys swimming, walking, cycling and reading, activities that shape her calm and steady approach in sessions.
Virginia lists 2 ways of working on the entry:
What Virginia works with
The areas below are the ones Virginia selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also listed
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Visually impaired
- Workplace issues
Training and background
| Register | BACP |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 24 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | United Kingdom |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches in online counselling and what to expect
Client-Centred Therapy focuses on creating a respectful, non-judgemental space where the person leads the conversation. It helps when someone needs time to make sense of feelings, grief or life changes and wants a counsellor who listens without directing.Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings and behaviours interact. It involves practical exercises and simple experiments to test unhelpful thinking and build new coping strategies for anxiety, depression or stress.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss goals and preferences and adapt methods as sessions progress. Together they decide which techniques are most helpful for ongoing needs.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to fit counselling into a busy life. Video calls let people see visual cues and support deeper conversation, phone sessions work well when bandwidth or visual focus is limited, live chat provides short check-ins, and text messaging suits ongoing reflection between meetings. These options make it easier to maintain regular sessions around work, caregiving or travel while using the approaches above.
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Common questions
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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