Rachel Kaye

Therapist Directory Listing Category: Psychotherapists and Counsellors

About the Therapist

About the therapist:

Hi, I’m Rachel (she/her), a counsellor and online therapist based in Shipley.

I specialise in working with LGBTQ+ clients and those who have always felt different in some way. I set up my practice to use my lived experience and training to provide high-quality, trauma-informed therapy to my community. You might not be coming to therapy to talk about your gender or sexuality, but you don’t want to spend your session time educating your therapist or worrying you’re being judged.

I have over 5 years’ experience as a therapist, including working for an LGBTQ+ charity, in private practice, and supporting staff and students at an FE college. My previous work in University and Arts settings and participation in activist/queer/feminist communities means I know first-hand the joys and challenges these spaces can bring.

I therefore have particular experience and interest in supporting clients facing workplace burnout and stress, navigating high pressure environments and work life balance, helping them to be their authentic selves.

My lived experience brings understanding of how anxiety and low self-esteem can make you feel like you’re broken, and my own journey has brought me proof that change is always possible.

Sexual identity:

Queer

Gender identity: Female

Gender history: As assigned at birth

Intersex: No

Neurodivergent: Unsure

Personal pronouns: She/Her

Qualifications - Links to websites:

Postgraduate Diploma - Counselling and Psychotherapy (Leeds Beckett University)

BACP member - 388130

Qualifications - Additional:

Award	Awarding body	Year of award

Experience and approach:

Are you looking for LGBTQ+ affirming therapy for help with anxiety, burnout or self-esteem? I specialise in working with queer clients to support them to feel good enough and start to enjoy life again.

Perhaps you feel anxious that you’re doing everything wrong. Sometimes you find yourself replaying conversations in your head, cringing at yourself and wondering why you can’t be “normal”. You might be starting to feel overwhelmed by things you used to handle easily. What if you can’t get it together to go to work tomorrow? What if it gets so bad that you can’t do anything at all? What if the panic attacks never stop?

You might have been signed off work before and worried about it happening again. You have a decent job that pays the bills, and feel like you should be grateful, but you’re not making a difference to the world in the way you always hoped you would. You wonder if that energetic and creative part of you is gone for ever.

Maybe being queer wasn’t what your family had in mind for your future. They might have said some problematic things in the past but another part of you wonders if they’re really that bad in the scheme of things? When it comes to your family you always get the feeling that you’re not handling things right, whatever you do.

I offer queer affirmative therapy that can help you

- Learn to manage anxiety and panic attacks so they don’t stop you living, working and making friends.

- Improve your confidence so you can be more sure of your decisions and start to feel good enough.

- Improve your relationships. Know yourself better and value yourself more so you can create and keep healthy relationships.

Working with me will give you a relaxed and non-judgemental space to be heard. I use my knowledge of attachment, how trauma impacts our nervous system, and insights and hope from my lived experience, to help you work out what to do to feel better. I strive to make my practice as anti-oppressive as possible, providing therapy that is queer affirmative, trauma informed and neuro-affirming.

My counselling draws from a range of therapy models, include Relational Psychotherapy, Attachment-informed, Compassion and polyvagal/somatic (body-focused) approaches.

I understake regular training and CPD to keep my skills and knowledge up-to-date, with a focus on self-compassion, embodied mindfulness approaches and working with LGBTQ+/GSRD clients.

Approaches: