Claire Payne , NCPS

Claire Payne is a trauma-informed NCPS-registered counsellor who welcomes people taking the first steps toward healing. She explains that beginning therapy can feel daunting and aims to accompany clients with patience and encouragement. Based in private practice in Torbay, Devon, she has worked with people both face-to-face and remotely across the United Kingdom and brings experience from social care settings to her clinical work.

Her practice is integrative, drawing on Person-Centred, Gestalt and cognitive-behavioural (CBT) approaches, and she is able to use Sand Tray work when finding words is difficult. Claire adapts sessions to each person, matching pace and style to individual needs and offering short- or long-term support. She specialises in family matters, trauma and abuse, self-esteem, career concerns and compassion fatigue, and also focusses on issues such as attachment and abandonment, caregiver stress, communication and control difficulties, divorce and separation, and post-traumatic stress.

Claire describes her role as collaborative - helping clients explore life purpose, navigate midlife transitions, manage impulsivity or isolation, and work through forgiveness, guilt or complex relational dynamics such as narcissism. Her NCPS credential indicates registration with a recognised counselling body and reflects her commitment to professional standards. Sessions are provided in English.

Evidence-Based Approaches and Online Support

Claire uses cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) to help people identify and shift unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviours. CBT is practical and structured, often useful for anxiety, low mood, trauma responses and difficulties with impulse control. She also works with Person-Centred principles, providing a warm, empathic environment that prioritises a person’s own strengths and goals - an approach that can help with self-esteem, relationship challenges and life purpose concerns. Gestalt techniques may be integrated to increase present-moment awareness and support work on attachment, communication and unresolved relational dynamics.

Finding the right combination of approaches is part of the therapeutic process. Claire takes a collaborative stance, exploring a client’s needs, preferences and goals together to tailor an approach that fits their pace and style of healing. This flexibility helps shape whether work is short term or longer term and which methods are emphasised.

Online therapy offers practical flexibility - sessions can be arranged by video call, phone, live chat or text-based messaging to suit different routines and comfort levels. These options make it easier to access therapy from home, balance work and caregiving commitments, and maintain continuity of support when in-person meetings are not possible, while still working with licensed professionals to address complex emotional and relational concerns.