Chandana Rathnayake , BACP, NCPS

Chandana Rathnayake is a BACP and NCPS registered counsellor with ten years of practice. He began counselling in 2013 and has worked in the UK since 2019, alongside a role advising on student mental health in higher education. He works with adults on problems such as stress, anxiety, grief, low self-esteem, depression, addiction concerns and anger.

He lived as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka for twenty years before moving into formal study in psychology and counselling. That life chapter shapes the way he listens and the kinds of questions he asks in sessions. He left the monkhood to raise a family and now brings those life changes into his work with others.

His style blends straightforward conversation with reflective exercises. He aims to help people notice the resources they already carry and to put difficult experiences to work in practical ways. Sessions involve talking through losses, setbacks and overthinking, and finding manageable steps forward.

Chandana often frames problems in terms of purpose and direction. He supports people facing career or education decisions, those seeking more meaning, and people coping with major changes. He also works with grief, struggles with self-esteem, and issues around intimacy and relationships as they affect the individual.

He describes his approach as collaborative. He draws on Client-Centred, Existential, Internal Family Systems and Systemic Therapy ideas to guide sessions. People who choose to work with him start by completing a short matching questionnaire and then schedule an initial meeting to see how the approach fits.

Approaches you can expect and how online work fits