Ruth Richards, BACP

Ruth Richards is a counsellor with 16 years of experience helping people through life changes and painful moments. She works with people who are feeling stressed, anxious, bereaved, overwhelmed by parenting or career pressures, or coping with trauma and long-term health challenges. Ruth aims to create an open, non-judgemental space where someone can feel heard and start to make small steps forward.

Ruth describes her style as down-to-earth and collaborative. She listens actively and adapts the pace to each person. Sessions are shaped around what matters most to the client, whether that means short-term focused work or exploring deeper issues over time.

Her approach draws on a mix of methods so each plan fits the individual. That can mean working on thoughts and behaviours, exploring attachment patterns, or developing values-based actions to handle stress and difficult emotions. Ruth encourages practical exercises to try between sessions.

People come to Ruth for a wide range of concerns including relationship difficulties, grief, low self-esteem, anger, ADHD-related struggles, compassion fatigue and chronic illness or pain. She also addresses issues such as abandonment, adoption and foster care, blended family tensions, body image and caregiver stress.

Ruth works with honesty and warmth and asks for a willingness to reflect and try new ways of coping. She supports clients to set clear goals and to practise small changes that build a stronger day-to-day life.

Therapeutic approaches that translate online

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice thoughts and feelings without being led by them, and then choose actions that reflect their values. It can help with anxiety, depression, and coping with long-term health issues. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on the links between thoughts, feelings and behaviours and offers practical techniques to change unhelpful patterns, which can reduce stress and improve daily functioning. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationships shape current ways of relating and is useful when relationship patterns or past abandonment affect present life.

Choosing the right approach is a shared process. Ruth will work with each person to outline options, try techniques, and see what fits their goals and preferences. That collaborative evaluation often happens over several sessions so adjustments can be made as the work unfolds.

The original biography does not list specific session formats, so please confirm the available online options before booking. Online therapy can help fit sessions into busy lives by avoiding travel, making it easier to take a short break at work, or allowing a quieter check-in on a tough day. Some approaches lend themselves to short practical tasks between meetings, which can be easier to manage when therapy fits around daily routines.