Shirley Banton

Shirley Banton is a counsellor with 11 years' experience who draws on a person-centred foundation to guide her work. She holds BACP accreditation and offers an approach that aims to be gentle, honest and collaborative. Shirley focuses on helping people feel heard and less overwhelmed as they make sense of difficult patterns.

Her practice places emphasis on trauma-informed care and reflective work. Sessions are paced to each person and aim to support safer exploration of painful memories and relational hurt. She helps people build boundaries, regain confidence and manage anxiety or emotional exhaustion.

Shirley uses a mix of approaches to match each person's needs. She may draw on cognitive behavioural ideas to address unhelpful thoughts and habits, solution-focused tools for practical change, and psychodynamic thinking to look at repeated patterns. Mindfulness techniques are used to help with grounding and distress tolerance.

She has particular experience supporting people affected by domestic and relational abuse, coercive control and long-term relational trauma. Her background in further and higher education also gives insight into stress, burnout and identity issues experienced by students and staff.

People who value thoughtful, reflective work tend to fit well with her style. She is comfortable working with concerns such as anxiety, depression, grief, addiction, eating and sleeping issues, ADHD, relationship and intimacy-related difficulties, and compassion fatigue.

How Shirley’s approaches translate to online therapy

Shirley commonly uses a person-centred way of working, which focuses on listening, empathy and following the pace set by the person in the room. This approach helps with emotional overwhelm, low self-worth and relationship patterns by creating space to feel heard and understood.

She also draws on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which looks at the links between thoughts, feelings and actions and offers practical steps to change unhelpful patterns. CBT can be useful for anxiety, depression and problems with sleep or routine.

Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the work. Shirley treats this as a collaborative process and will discuss which methods suit a person’s goals and preferences. Together they decide whether to focus more on reflection, practical skills, or a combination.

The biography states she offers online therapy but does not specify the exact session formats, so confirm the options before booking. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life, cut travel time, or have a shorter check-in when schedules are tight. They also allow continued contact with a therapist when relocating or working across time zones, which helps people maintain steady support while they work on change.