Shahna Thurston
Client-centred therapist emphasising practical skills
About Shahna
Shahna Thurston works from a client-centred and existential perspective. She blends these approaches with mindfulness and skills-based techniques to help people manage strong emotions and everyday stress. Shahna is listed with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, BACP, and has five years of professional experience.
She offers straightforward, practical support for anxiety, depression and stress. She also helps people dealing with addiction, grief, trauma and issues around intimacy and relationships.
Background and approach
Sessions focus on building coping skills, noticing unhelpful patterns and practising new ways of responding. Shahna uses mindfulness exercises and parts of dialectical behaviour therapy to teach emotion regulation and distress tolerance. She draws on existential ideas to help people find meaning and direction when life feels uncertain.
Motivational interviewing is used when someone wants help making changes but feels stuck. Work in sessions is conversational and collaborative. Clients can expect reflective listening, gentle challenges and practical tools to try between meetings.
The aim is to increase resilience, improve self-esteem and reduce the hold of past hurts on present life. Shahna supports people with a wide range of concerns including sleep and eating difficulties, parenting strain, career stress, chronic illness and compassion fatigue. She also addresses attachment issues, body image and problems around communication and commitment.
Therapy is offered in English and is based in the United Kingdom.
What Shahna works with
How Shahna works
Listed by Shahna among the ways they work.
Listed by Shahna among the ways they work.
Listed by Shahna among the ways they work.
Listed by Shahna among the ways they work.
Listed by Shahna among the ways they work.
Listed by Shahna among the ways they work.
Sessions & fees
Approach-focused online therapy and practical skills
Shahna commonly uses client-centred work and dialectical behaviour techniques online. Client-centred therapy involves listening closely and helping people lead the conversation about what matters to them; it is useful for building trust and exploring life choices. Dialectical behaviour therapy, or DBT, provides concrete skills for managing intense emotions, reducing reactivity and improving relationships.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Shahna will discuss your needs and preferences and try methods that suit your goals. This is a collaborative process where the therapist and client adjust what happens in sessions based on what helps most.
Online therapy is offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat and text-based messaging to give practical options. Video is helpful for a face-to-face feel and shared exercises, phone calls work well if bandwidth is limited, live chat suits quick check-ins and text messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These formats make it easier to fit therapy around work, caregiving or travel and keep continuity when life is busy.
| Session length | Typically 50 minutes |
|---|---|
| Client ages | Adults, 18 and over |
| Fees | Subscription via BetterHelp, cancel anytime |
| Insurance | Not billed directly |
Questions people ask
What kinds of problems does Shahna focus on?
What is Shahna's therapeutic style?
How much experience does she have?
What credentials and location are listed?
Which languages are supported for sessions?
What session formats are available?
How is cost handled?
How do I begin sessions?
Areas of focus
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counselling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 5 years
- Registered with
- BACP
- Languages
- English
