Melissa Foster, BACP

Melissa Foster is a BACP counsellor with five years of experience supporting people through stress, anxiety, grief and life changes. She aims to make the first step into therapy feel manageable and calm. Melissa offers a warm, non-judgemental space where clients can be heard and begin to make sense of difficult feelings.

Her work often focuses on everyday problems such as relationships, parenting challenges, self-esteem and career uncertainty. She also supports people working through issues like separation, fertility concerns, cancer-related distress and feelings of emptiness. Melissa helps people build coping strategies and regain a clearer sense of direction.

Melissa uses a person-centred style, which means she adapts sessions to each person’s needs and pace. She combines this with practical techniques from cognitive behavioural therapy, and with psychodynamic ideas to look at recurring patterns. Solution-focused strategies are used when clients want short-term goals and quick steps forward.

Her training includes Level 5 Psychotherapeutic Counselling and she is a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, BACP. This background informs how she works ethically and professionally with clients. Sessions aim to be collaborative and respectful of the client’s own goals.

People come to Melissa when they feel overwhelmed, stuck or unsure of the next step. She offers steady, straightforward support to help clients explore feelings, test new ways of coping and move towards practical change.

How Melissa’s approaches work in online therapy

Melissa draws on client-centred work, which focuses on listening and responding to what matters most to the person in front of her. This approach helps people feel heard and decide the pace and topics they want to work on.

She also uses cognitive behavioural therapy, which looks at the links between thoughts, feelings and actions. CBT offers practical tools for anxiety, stress and low mood, such as planning behavioural experiments or testing unhelpful thoughts.

Finding the right approach is part of the process rather than a one-time decision. Melissa will talk through goals and preferences with each person and choose methods together. That collaborative planning helps make sessions feel relevant and doable.

If you are considering online work, please confirm the current session options before booking as formats are not specified here. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy week, reduce travel time and allow quick check-ins when needed. They can also be adapted to quieter or shorter slots, lower-bandwidth calls, or focused practical exercises depending on what suits the client and their schedule.