If you have been looking for online counselling in the UK, you have probably run into one of two walls: private counselling at £70 or more a session, which adds up faster than anyone likes to admit, or a waiting list so long that by the time your name comes up, the crisis that sent you looking has either passed or grown roots.
I am a counsellor in private practice, registered as a social worker with the SACSSP in South Africa, and I see people across the UK by video call from my practice in Johannesburg. That geography is the whole reason my fee is £40: not because the work is lighter, but because a good professional rate in South Africa looks very different from one in London or Manchester.
How online sessions work
Sessions are 60 minutes over video call, usually weekly or fortnightly. You need nothing more than a quiet room, a decent connection, and a door you can close — people join me from kitchens after the children are in bed, from parked cars, from spare rooms with the laundry pushed out of frame. None of that matters. What matters is the hour.
We begin with a free introductory call of 15 to 20 minutes, so you can hear my voice, ask your questions, and decide whether I am someone you could talk to. If I am not the right fit, I will say so honestly.
Evenings that actually work
One quiet advantage of working with an online counsellor in South Africa rather than one in Australia or America: the clocks nearly agree. I am only one hour ahead of the UK in summer and two in winter, so your evening is my evening. A 7pm session in London is 8 or 9pm for me — entirely workable, and nothing like the 3am gymnastics that transatlantic counselling demands.
Daytime and lunchtime appointments are just as simple, if you would rather not end your day in a session.
What I can help with
A career this long covers a great deal of human trouble. The people who find me from the UK most often bring:
- Grief and bereavement — including losses the people around you have stopped asking about
- Anxiety that has outgrown the tricks you use to manage it
- Trauma, old and recent, worked with gently and including body-based work where it helps
- Relationships — I also offer couples counselling online
My training is person-centred, emotionally focused, somatic and trauma-focused. In practice that means we go at your pace, and I use what fits you rather than fitting you to a method.
About the fee, plainly
Private counselling in the UK commonly costs £60 to £120 a session. Mine is £40 — and I want to be clear about why, because a low fee can read as a warning sign, and it shouldn't here. I live and practise in South Africa, where £40 is a solid professional rate. You are not getting a discount version of counselling; you are getting a counsellor whose overheads sit on a different continent. I have written more about this on my affordable online counselling page, and the practical details are on fees.
If you are stuck on a waiting list
Many people who contact me have already done the sensible things — spoken to their GP, been referred, joined a list — and are now in the strange limbo of waiting months for help with something that is happening today. Starting online counselling in the meantime is not queue-jumping and it is not disloyal to the NHS. It is simply getting support while you wait, and if your NHS place comes up, we can end well and hand over properly.