Claudia Santiago, LCSW

Therapeutic approaches and online care

Client-centered therapy emphasizes listening to the person first and following their priorities. The therapist asks open questions, reflects what she hears, and supports clients in choosing what matters most to them. This approach helps when someone wants a supportive space to make sense of parenting stress, mood changes, or identity concerns.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on the links between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It uses simple experiments and skill-building to reduce anxiety, improve mood, and change unhelpful patterns. Clients often leave sessions with practical exercises to try between meetings.

Mindfulness practices teach paying attention on purpose to reduce reactivity and improve sleep and focus. Short breathing exercises and grounding techniques are examples used to manage overwhelm and chronic stress.

Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what has helped in the past to decide whether client-centered listening, CBT, mindfulness, or a mix is the best fit. That decision is collaborative and may shift over time.

Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, and text-based messaging to make therapy flexible. Video is good for longer conversations and visual cues, phone works well if bandwidth is limited, live chat can provide a quick check-in, and text messaging supports brief ongoing contact. These options help people fit therapy around work, caregiving, and daily life.