Charlene Douglas

Why organisations work with Charlene Douglas

• A clinically trained therapist, not a wellbeing presenter. Diplomas in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychosexual Studies (2018), BACP-registered, with a private practice in London behind every session she delivers.
• Public credibility from Channel 4’s Married at First Sight UK gives her unusual reach into employee audiences who would tune out a more traditional speaker, without diluting the substance of what she covers.
• Author of Come Closer (Penguin Random House / DK, 2024), a published synthesis of the communication, intimacy and self-awareness frameworks she uses with clients, available as anchor content for follow-on workshops.
• Talks about boundaries, communication and stress with the directness of a working therapist, which lands differently inside organisations than corporate wellbeing language usually does.
• Brings a Black woman entrepreneur’s lens to belonging and imposter syndrome conversations, drawn from her own practice rather than from a DEI framework deck.

Biography highlights

• Sex and relationship therapist on Channel 4’s Married at First Sight UK since 2021.
• Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling, Highgate Counselling Centre (2018).
• Diploma in Psychosexual Studies, Centre of Psychosexual Health (2018).
• Registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).
• Author of Come Closer: Everything You Ever Wanted to Ask a Sex and Relationship Therapist (Penguin Random House / DK, 2024).
• Founder of private practice The Intimacy Coach; broadcast and podcast credits include Good Morning Britain, Steph’s Packed Lunch, E4’s The Sex Clinic, and The Referral with Dr Karan.

Biography

Most workplace wellbeing programmes are built around the individual. The relationships people are inside, with managers, peers, and themselves, are where the strain actually shows. That is the territory Charlene Douglas has worked in for almost a decade as a clinically trained therapist, and it translates more directly into team performance than the wellbeing industry usually admits.

Douglas qualified through the Highgate Counselling Centre in psychodynamic counselling and the Centre of Psychosexual Health in psychosexual studies, both in 2018. She is registered with the BACP and runs The Intimacy Coach, a private practice working with individuals and couples in London and online. The clinical grounding is what separates her from the broader category of relationship commentators.

Channel 4 brought her onto the expert panel of Married at First Sight UK in 2021, which has given her a public platform that few therapists with comparable credentials have. She has used it to publish Come Closer with Penguin Random House in 2024, a book that captures the communication and self-awareness work she does with couples and adapts it for a general reader.

For corporate audiences, she draws on the same clinical material to talk about boundaries, communication, stress, and the quiet ways relationships at work erode under pressure. Her own experience as a Black woman building a private practice and a public profile feeds directly into how she handles questions of belonging, voice, and confidence with senior audiences.

Key speaking topics

• Communication and boundaries at work
• Stress, self-care and burnout prevention
• Resilience, wellbeing and mental health
• Team dynamics and psychological safety
• Belonging and imposter syndrome
• Leadership with empathy
• Inclusion and the lived experience of difference

Ideal for

• HR, People and Culture leaders building wellbeing programmes that need clinical credibility
• Employee resource groups and women’s networks, including events centred on women of colour
• Internal communications and town hall events seeking a recognisable name with substantive content
• Leadership development cohorts working on empathy, listening and difficult conversations

Audience outcomes

• A clearer language for what good and bad communication look like in everyday work relationships
• Practical boundary-setting techniques drawn from clinical practice rather than self-help
• Direct frameworks for managing stress and protecting personal capacity under sustained pressure
• A more honest conversation about belonging and confidence that does not retreat into corporate DEI vocabulary