Josephine Patten-Walsh

Josephine Patten-Walsh is a United Kingdom-based counsellor and psychotherapist with 10 years of clinical experience supporting people through emotional stress, difficult life events and relationship challenges.

Skilled at creating a sense of safety, she helps clients explore and understand their feelings, improve how they relate to others and reduce patterns of behaviour that are not serving them well. She offers both short-term work to address specific situations and longer-term therapy to build greater self-understanding, and she commits to working collaboratively using ground-breaking therapeutic approaches to meet each person’s needs.

Her training enables her to work with adults, adolescents, couples and clinical supervisees. She is one of only a handful of UK psychotherapists trained in AEDP, a trauma-informed, integrative approach that combines neurobiology with traditional psychotherapy. She is also trained in contemporary CBT and the use of creative interventions, and she holds enhanced DBS status for working with children and vulnerable adults.

Josephine holds BACP Accredited status, which reflects demonstrated proficiency as a counsellor and psychotherapist within the BACP ethical framework, and she has a Clinical Supervision Qualification that speaks to her professional standards in supervising others.

She provides help with a wide range of concerns, including loss and change due to bereavement, work or family issues; repetitive unhelpful behaviours that a person finds difficult to stop; relationship problems with family, friends or colleagues, including issues arising from betrayal, cheating or abusive behaviour; loneliness and wanting to build connection; substance misuse, alcohol problems or gambling debt and how these affect family members; and responses to tragic events such as crime, suicide, mental breakdown, domestic abuse or sexual assault.

She has both training and first-hand experience in some of these areas, including dealings with the criminal justice system, and can support clients in navigating unfamiliar or overwhelming circumstances. Josephine also works with mental health presentations such as self-harm, disordered eating, compulsive behaviours, insomnia, severe anxiety or panic attacks, and other patterns of behaviour that feel confusing or uncharacteristic.

She offers a space to talk about things from the past and to be heard by a non-judgemental listener. Each person’s story is attended to with care and, where requested, in the strictest confidence.

Other areas of professional interest include research she completed into the mental health impact of neurodivergence (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia) as part of her counselling degree, ongoing study of PTSD and Complex Trauma, and an interest in the relationship between minority stress and diversity issues, particularly the effects of migration on second and third generations. Her specialisms also cover stress, anxiety, relationship difficulties, trauma and abuse, grief, coping with life changes, addictions, family and intimacy-related issues, sleeping problems, parenting, anger, self-esteem, bipolar presentations and compassion fatigue, and she works with clients from a range of backgrounds including Christian, non-religious, gay, older, conservative and liberal perspectives.