Baixuan Shen

Sometimes the hardest moments are not when life falls apart, but when the life that once made sense no longer quite fits.

I am a bilingual integrative psychotherapist offering online therapy in English and Mandarin.

I work particularly with adults experiencing difficulties around relationships, attachment, identity, belonging, life transitions and meaning. You may be functioning well outwardly, yet find yourself caught in recurring relational patterns, feeling emotionally unsettled, or questioning who you are and what you want from your life.

My approach is relational and integrative, grounded in person-centred therapy and attachment theory. Depending on your needs, I may also draw on CBT, ACT, DBT-informed and compassion-focused approaches.

I am interested not only in what has happened to you, but in how your experiences are felt in the body, repeated in relationships, and connected with the way you understand yourself.

For bilingual and cross-cultural clients, you are welcome to move between English and Mandarin during sessions.

I am a BACP Registered Member. Alongside my clinical practice, I am undertaking doctoral research in Education at the University of Cambridge, with interests in dialogue, relational processes and psychological space.

You can find out more about my practice at shencounselling.co.uk.

I offer online psychotherapy for adults, usually on a weekly basis.

Sessions are 50 minutes and take place via Zoom. My work is collaborative and paced according to what feels most useful for you. Some sessions may focus on making sense of recurring patterns or past experiences; others may involve staying more closely with emotions, bodily responses, relationships or uncertainty as they arise in the present.

I do not work from a fixed formula. As an integrative therapist, I draw from a range of therapeutic models, interventions and ways of exploring experience, depending on what feels most useful for you. This might involve open conversation and reflection, experiential work, structured psychological models, behavioural experiments, imagery, grounding, or other practical tools where appropriate. The aim is not simply to reduce difficult feelings, but to understand what they may be communicating and to develop ways of responding that feel more intentional and sustainable.

I particularly welcome clients who want to explore relationship patterns, attachment, identity, cross-cultural experiences, grief, shame, anxiety, trauma-related experiences, neurodivergence and questions of meaning or direction.

We will review our work regularly so that we can consider together what is changing, what still feels important, and whether the way we are working continues to meet your needs.

I offer an initial 15–20 minute consultation before beginning regular therapy.

This gives us an opportunity to briefly discuss what brings you to therapy, what you may be hoping for, and whether working together feels appropriate. I will also explain how I work, confidentiality, practical arrangements and fees, and you are welcome to ask any questions you may have.

If we decide to work together, regular sessions are 50 minutes and usually take place weekly.

The first full therapy session will usually involve exploring your current situation in more depth, including what feels most important to you at the moment, relevant background, and what you would like from therapy. There is no expectation that you arrive with everything clearly worked out.

We can take time to understand what feels most useful to focus on and agree together how we would like to begin the work.