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Steph Jones
Steph Jones is a consultant, coach, and bestselling author (JKP/Hachette). She has a background in psychotherapy, having trained and practised as an accredited psychotherapist (BACP, NCPS), and holds a BSc (Hons) from Leeds Beckett University and an MSc in Psychotherapy from the University of Salford.
Throughout her career, she has held roles across clinical, community, and leadership settings, including director, supervisor, neurodevelopmental assessor, therapist, trainer, programme developer, and consultant, in a wide range of psychology, health, social care, mental health, and advocacy organisations.
Her writing and commentary have appeared in The Guardian, Metro, the BBC, Psychotherapy and Politics International, and Therapy Today. She has collaborated with Channel 4, appeared on national radio and television, and built a strong presence across social media, alongside contributing to a growing body of academic and professional publications.
Her Approach
Over the years, Steph observed how traditional therapeutic models can restrict, and sometimes pathologise, people who think, feel, or move through the world differently. Her work now sits beyond those rigid frameworks, offering an approach that is more expansive, intuitive, and rooted in research. She focuses on understanding the human psyche in a way that allows for nuance rather than narrowing.
Steph is widely recognised for her ability to translate complex inner experience into compassionate, accessible guidance that helps people feel deeply understood, often for the first time. She supports clients through the mental, psychological, and spiritual aspects of their lives, bringing solid knowledge, genuine care, and a strong perceptive sense to her work.
As featured in
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Steph Jones Consultancy 
I have just read with joy and delight your article in Therapy Today, so much so that I then read your website. Very good indeed. I would certainly recommend you to people in your area, though as I live and work in Dorset, that doesn’t happen too often. I just wanted to tell you I agree with all you say, love your approach, and wish you all the best with your work and life (ok I know they are the same I’m just being lazy in putting it that way). Love and best wishes Mary. By the way I have never responded in this way to an article in a therapy journal before!
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Hi Steph- I don’t normally do this but I really wanted to send a message and say how much I enjoyed your article in Therapy Today. I related completely to it and I thought it was beautifully written. Like Mary I’ve never responded to an article like this but it really touched me and ‘my stuff’. Thanks for making my day. Holly
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Your article inspired me too. Thank you Steph. I’ve been planning to arrange some more counselling for a while and your article spurred me on to make contact with a therapist. Got to keep those tools sharpened and care for ourselves!
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Amazing article in Therapy Today Steph thanks for that and all the best it sounds like you’re an excellent counsellor and have great integrity,
Julia
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Hi Steph,
Like many of the other people here I’ve never felt inspired to do this either but wanted to contact you to say how much I enjoyed your article and the genuiness and authenticity you display. I loved the ending when you proclaim how ‘real’ you are but that despite warts and all you are still good enough! Reminds me of Yalom who always appeared ‘so real’ and he is one of my heroes!
I totally agree with how there is a heightened sensitivity and empathy when you have experienced trauma yourself that no amount of qualifications can match! Having had my world turned upside down in my 40s by a marriage break up I am conscious that my emotional spectrum was stretched to full capacity. One of the ways I found to utilize this pain was like many others to become a ‘wounded healer’.
I have been having my own therapy for 2 years now and it has been invaluable on my journey of discovery. It has taken me this long to face some of my demons. My counsellor also has personal therapy and I feel it is through her disclosure that we connect at a deeper level. I am so passionate about this work and am so thankful that despite my losses God has led me to this place of continual growth and knowledge about myself and others and I am able to use my experiences to be able to empathize more powerfully.
Best wishes
Nicki
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Hi Steph,this too is a first for me to email another fellow therapist after reading an article in Therapy Today! I really enjoying reading it. What struck me the most was just how honest and genuine you came across in words … I felt I could almost touch it! I too am always myself in the therapy room, bringing in humour, honesty and empathy. It’s who I am and I truly believe this is the reason why my ‘books are always full’. Self-care is ‘up there’ and non-negotiable and I am in need of it today, so I have engaged in some lovely activities for myself this morning including writing this email, in time for client work this afternoon!!
Good luck in all that you do.
Warmest wishes.
Nicole Gibbs
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Hi Steph. Wow! What an amazing & positive response from your piece in therapy today. I don’t know you. But after reading ‘experts by experience ‘ I feel I do! Well done for your honesty. I am in my 2nd year of a PC counselling degree & thanks to you, have found a fantastic article to share in my presentation on mental health at the end of this month. Thanks! Caroline
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Hello Steph, your article in TT is excellent. I’m a huge fan of the wounded healer legend. I’ve just been reading Yalom’s 2016 autobiography which could have easily been entitled “My paradise life where everything I touched turned to gold”. Anyway, I am looking to arrange counselling sessions for myself with you and am attracted thus because I’m also a musician. Please let me know. Kind regards. Anthony
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Hi Steph – I felt compelled to write to you having read your article in Therapy Today this month. It would seem that I am not alone! What a refreshing, honest and enjoyable read! At times I wanted to punch the air with joy (though would have been a bit weird since I was reading it in bed with a flu ridden husband!), as it seemed you have been able to capture in words that intuitive skill (magical power or Woo Woo!) to describe what I have always known – that my personal experiences and subsequent counselling for severe anxiety and panic attacks has brought something special to my own counselling practice, and (dare I say it) I strongly believe that those of us who have ‘walked the walk’ in some way have a significant edge to the empathy and understanding we offer our clients.
I salute you for taking the plunge and writing such from such an honest place. You have also inspired me to put a little more of myself and my own experiences into an article I am currently writing for BACP Workplace regarding Anxiety and Panic Attacks in the Workplace. Let’s keep this rolling – shall we hastag #MetooWooWoo?!
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Hi Steph
Well, here is yet another reader of your Therapy Today article who also felt compelled to write – and I, too, have rarely done this in the past! As with all who have written before me, I thoroughly enjoyed your honesty and the reality of therapeutic work that was embedded throughout your article. I found myself nodding my head, smiling and agreeing wholeheartedly with so much of what you wrote. THIS is what therapy/counselling is about. From my own experiences as a therapist, I know that the moments when I have shared my darkest moments in life, (the wounded healer in action), have been the ones when I felt closest to my clients and when I have seen, and felt, in the room that sense of connection which is so vital to the therapeutic relationship. And I concur with the praise of Yalom in Nikki’s response – one of my heroes too, who is always so utterly human and owns up to, and shares of himself, warts and all! I wish you well with your work.
Warm wishes
Jane Dixey
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Dear Steph
I’m unsurprised to see that I’m not the only one inspired to contact you after reading your article in Therapy Today. I really appreciated not only the message but also the way in which you’ve conveyed it, both articulate and down to earth and REAL. It reminded me of when I took my first steps in counselling training, when – having had only a few episodes of short-term counselling – I decided I needed to see a counsellor just to help me understand my responses to the training itself. During that period I remember saying to the trainer “But I can’t become a counsellor until I’m totally normal myself.” Now I smile to remember that, as I no longer know quite what I meant by it. I feel fortunate that I undertook my training in a field that demanded that trainees had therapy during training; for me now I can’t separate what I learned in training from what I learned in therapy. From when I first started seeing clients I was passionate about a desire to equalise the power relationship, and yet I’m still aware of a cautiousness – perhaps shame? – about acknowledging I might need help myself. Your article has encouraged me to be less afraid to show my own humanity for the benefit of my clients.
Thank you!
Lucy
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Hi Steph like many of the comments above I, too absolutely loved your article in ‘therapy today’ and never before have I responded to an author but feel I had to after reading what you wrote. Well done! Lucy walker (MBACP)
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Hello Steph
I loved your article in Therapy Today – your honesty, wisdom and humility. Helping clients to find meaning and to learn about self acceptance describes the core of my practice – having gladly used my own personal therapy from which I experienced first hand that ‘feeling felt” something, as described by Dan Siegal – that trust and connection which then allows the clients own innate wisdom to flow. I too “self care the shit out of the low days” in aiming to practice what I preach! Warmest regards Marie
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I have just read your article in March ,Therapy Today,having just come back from a month in Kenya attempting to help out in Schools in the slums which are supported by a UK charity ‘Porridge & Rice’
Like the person at the commencement of your article I only trained as a Counsellor following retirement after 41 years in practice as a Chartered Accountant but unlike him I did engage in personal therapy for 2 yrs. approx.
I was married for 30 yrs.(which was initially triggered by a pregnancy) but in my 50’s suffered a breakdown involving 3 months abscence from work. In this period I resolved to end my marriage.
Your article coincides entirely with my thinking ( I think it should be a compulsory requirement for people on BACP accredited courses to engage in counselling)
In my school counselling work I answer questions truthfully with appropriate self disclosure.
I regard the peer comment ‘what if a client read it’ as irrelevant.
In regard to research the work in my field appears to be confined to comparisons between the waiting list clients & those engaged in counselling.Anything may have happened outside the counselling to effect a change in someone’s life.I therefore regard the comparisons as meaningless & not capable of scientific replication which I understand is the criteria for meaningful scientific research.
I have recently attempted to work with traumatised adults where I think their is relevance that I am a ‘wounded healer’
Finally I am not sure what you mean by an ’empathic badass’
Geoff
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Hello Steph,
I was inspired to write to you regarding your article, ‘Experts by Experience’ in March’s edition of Therapy Today magazine. (Please forgive the intrusion… I don’t normally write to someone I don’t know…).
Your article gave me ‘food for thought’…. I’ve lost count of the number of times, my reasons for not wanting to ‘stick with it…..’ the essays, the loss of my personal life and why I wanted to be a counsellor in the first place?
I have just completed a two year Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling and now I know why!
Thank you Steph! Your article was a joy to read.
Kind regards.
Angela 🙂
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Hello Steph,
Thank you. It was lovely to contact with you too! Congratulations on the book. I’m sure it will be amazing! Your genuineness is so inspirational and I felt it ‘touched’ something in me. I look forward to reading your new book. Very best wishes. Angela xxx
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Thank you so much for your book.
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Hi Steph,
I have struggled with mental health my entire life (I am 58), and during my last big crash, about 10 years ago, it was suggested I might be on the spectrum however funding was not available. fast forward… I could feel myself going down the slippery path once again… and found out this time it would be funded under the “right to choose”… So I eagerly awaited my Diagnostic assessment.. I received the questionnaire … and went into some very dark places as all my traumatic memories that I had buried came flooding back .. physically painfully..
The day arrived.. I sat in the Diagnostic room.. I was severely anxious…but there was a bookshelf … with your book in the corner… I hyper focused on the colour… and the Survival title.. and it was confirmed “yes you are Autistic…but may I ask what you were focusing on during the assessment?” I told the Clinician ..that yellow book… The clinician smiled and said .. here.. keep it as your welcome gift to your new life”..
I handed it to my very close friend who attended the assessment with me.. as she is a SEN teaching assistant who is as we speak is reading it like mad.
My diagnosis, has hit me like a train… and I have avoided my research until today (almost a week).. when I searched in YouTube for Autism.. and watched the first top hit channel.. 25 seconds in… Your book again!!
So I have googled you.. as thats way to much coincidence… only to discover…the organisation/clinical team you are part off…THE team who have given me the First “make sense”answers in my life, about my life!!
This pattern .. has just well … (Now I am going to ask my friend to read faster and get the book back!!) blown my brain into a shower of mainly Yellow and I know I am going to Survive!
Thank you!
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Hi, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your book – I read the part about red flags the evening before my first therapy session with a new psychologist who supposedly specialised in autism, but who had many of the red flags! Your book saved me from wasting my time and money on that psychologist. Luckily it turns out that my GP is autistic, and they are pretty sure that I am too and have recommended that I get assessed. Thanks to your book, I feel equipped to identify if a therapist is good for me 😀
Many thanks again,
David
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