Leona Kim Welham, AASW

Leona Kim Welham is an AASW counsellor with eight years' experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, relationship problems, family conflict, trauma and grief. She focuses on practical, everyday steps clients can use to feel steadier. She works with people coping with cancer, chronic illness, caregiving strain and loss. She aims to make the first session easier and is glad you took the step to enquire.

Leona creates a calm space where feelings and worries can be named without judgment. Sessions typically involve listening, asking clear questions and trying small changes that feel doable. She pays attention to how illness and treatment affect routines, roles and emotional energy, and helps people find ways to cope day to day.

Her approach draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Client-Centred Therapy and Narrative Therapy to help people notice what matters to them and shape life around those values. She also uses Solution-Focused and Trauma-Focused techniques when they suit the situation. Therapy may include practicing new responses, reworking unhelpful stories about events, and setting short-term goals.

Leona’s background includes supporting people through serious illness, caregiving stress and end-of-life concerns. She is comfortable discussing difficult topics such as domestic violence, separation and feelings of isolation. Her style is warm, practical and down-to-earth, aimed at helping clients manage the demands they face.

Clients are guided to set realistic goals and try changes between sessions. Leona encourages people to bring what feels most urgent to the room, and she works collaboratively to prioritise next steps and build daily coping strategies.

How therapy approaches guide online sessions

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings without getting stuck, then choose actions that match their values. It can be useful for anxiety, stress and coping with long-term illness. Client-Centred Therapy centres the person's own experience, with the therapist offering empathic listening and gentle reflection to help people find their own solutions. Narrative Therapy looks at the stories people tell about themselves and their lives, and works to reframe those stories so they support coping and agency.

Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will discuss your needs, goals and preferences and help decide which approaches to try. That decision is collaborative and can be adjusted as sessions progress to better fit what helps you most.

The original biography does not list specific online formats, so please confirm available session options before booking. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life - for example by removing travel time, allowing shorter check-ins during a lunch break, or making it simpler to continue work while managing medical appointments. Appropriately qualified therapists can use online sessions to practise new skills, process difficult events and set realistic goals that transfer into daily routines.