Dorcas Upshall, BACP

Dorcas Upshall is a BACP-registered counsellor practising in the United Kingdom with three years of professional experience. She focuses on stress, anxiety, relationship difficulties, trauma and abuse, addiction, grief, eating and body image issues, and wider family and parenting concerns. Sessions emphasise the client's own goals and practical steps they can try between meetings.

Dorcas uses clear, down-to-earth language in sessions. She helps people notice thinking and behaviour patterns that feel stuck. She also supports those wanting to understand their past experiences and how these affect current relationships and choices. This includes work around intimacy, attachment and sexual expression such as BDSM and kink culture.

Her background includes roles in domestic abuse services, LGBTQ+ charities, addiction and recovery work, and pastoral care in schools. She has also worked with adult and young person special needs provisions and taught for over ten years. Those roles inform a practical approach to difficulties like communication problems, control issues, isolation and compassion fatigue.

In practice Dorcas blends Client-Centred methods with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Internal Family Systems ideas. She draws on existential themes when people are wrestling with life purpose or major change. Sessions aim to clarify what matters to the client and to develop small, achievable changes.

People who come to Dorcas can expect straightforward, focused conversations that connect daily life to emotional patterns. She asks about goals early on and works together with each person to monitor progress and adjust the approach as needed.

How Dorcas uses different approaches in online work