My Story

Hello, my name is Vera Braghiroli.

I am a qualified Integrative Counsellor and am pursuing a Master's degree and an Advanced Diploma in Integrative Psychotherapy and Counselling at the Minster Centre in London. I came to this work later, after another profession and years of full-time parenting. Both shape how I listen.

I earned my first Master's degree in Public Relations at IULM in Milan, before moving to the UK, where my family now lives. That took me into advertising and marketing for international television networks, between Italy and the UK, until I became a mother.

Motherhood shifted my values and priorities. I chose to home-educate our child throughout primary school, and trained as a Hand in Hand Parenting instructor. All of it made me want to become better at connecting with people as we actually are, including myself. So I trained as a counsellor.

Udaya is my private practice. In Sanskrit, Udaya means rising or dawn, carrying connotations of expansion and light, and by extension, prosperity. It felt right for describing the therapeutic emergence and new beginnings my work aims to foster.

I practise within the BACP Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions and the UKCP Code of Ethics and Professional Practice, and receive regular clinical supervision, which helps me maintain a reflective and ethical practice.

Alongside my private practice, I volunteer with the Listening Post, a counselling charity providing low-cost support across Gloucestershire, and work in a school with children with social, emotional and mental health needs. This adds the lenses of family systems, attachment and safeguarding to the way in which I sit with adults navigating their own histories.