Jacintha Canary, BACP

Jacintha Canary is a South African immigrant living in the United Kingdom with more than 25 years of experience in counselling, mental health and wellbeing work. She brings a faith-informed perspective as a Christian while welcoming people of all faiths, spiritual backgrounds and those with no faith, and she frames therapy as a shared journey toward greater balance and wellbeing.

Her professional background includes work in family therapy and couple counselling and extensive experience addressing anxiety, domestic abuse, trauma, abandonment, addictions and resilience. She supports people dealing with life transitions such as relocating to a new country and adapting to different cultures, workplace change and shifting community dynamics. Her practice also covers grief, self-esteem, relationship and intimacy issues, eating concerns, parenting and caregiver stress, anger, career-related challenges and compassion fatigue, among other areas.

Jacintha practices from a person-centered orientation, focusing on facilitation and joint exploration rather than providing ready-made answers. She also integrates the QSL and HEAL frameworks developed by Dr Carlo Monsanto, approaches that use body mapping and attention to bodily sensations to support self-exploration, integration of past or present trauma and steps toward healing. Her formal qualifications include Teaching (Primary), Sports (Basketball), a Post Graduate Diploma in Person-Centered Counselling, a Certificate in the QSL Framework and Methodology, and community leadership qualifications, along with additional coursework in resilience, forgiveness, anger and conflict resolution, mental health, mentoring and coaching. Having been a client herself, she brings an authentic, empathetic presence to the therapeutic relationship and welcomes contact from those seeking support.

Approaches for online therapy and how they help

Jacintha Canary primarily works from a client-centered approach - sometimes called person-centered therapy - which emphasizes listening, empathy and collaboration. This method supports people who want a respectful space to explore feelings, values and life choices without being given prescriptive answers.

She also draws on trauma-focused work that attends to the effects of past harm and helps people process and integrate difficult experiences at a pace that feels manageable. This approach can be helpful for those dealing with abuse, abandonment, dissociation or the lingering impact of distressing events.

Mindfulness-based elements appear in her practice through attention to body sensations and present-moment awareness, tools that can reduce reactivity and increase self-understanding when coping with anxiety, stress or emotional overwhelm.

Finding the right approach is part of the therapeutic process. Jacintha will collaborate with each person to identify which methods fit their needs, goals and preferences, and she adapts the work over time as those needs change.

Online therapy options include video calls, phone sessions, live chat and text-based messaging, offering practical flexibility for people balancing work, family, travel or differing time zones. These formats make it easier to access licensed professionals and therapists from wherever a person is located, helping therapy fit into everyday life.