About Alison
Alison McCandless is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) practicing in Colorado. She has three years of experience working in community mental health and holds licenses in both Illinois and Colorado. Alison works with people facing stress, anxiety, mood concerns, trauma, and life changes.
She began providing care in a community mental health setting in Chicago, working with people from low-income backgrounds who had a range of needs. That work involved helping with depression, anxiety, psychotic symptoms, trauma, and the everyday strains of life.
Background and approach
Alison uses that experience to inform how she listens and plans treatment. Her approach blends practical skills and history. She teaches coping tools and behavior strategies while also gathering personal history to help clients make meaning of past events.
This combination aims to connect current struggles to earlier experiences while offering concrete steps to feel better. Alison draws on several methods, including cognitive behavioral techniques and Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills, along with attachment-focused and psychodynamic ideas. She pays attention to how relationships and early patterns shape mood and reactions.
Motivational interviewing is used when people face ambivalence or want help moving toward change. People can expect a nonjudgmental, hopeful stance. Alison emphasizes a strengths-based view and a biopsychosocial assessment to understand functioning and symptoms.
If a person and therapist seem like a good fit, she invites them to begin a collaborative process toward clearer coping and improved daily functioning.
Online approaches that combine skills and story
Alison commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to identify unhelpful thoughts and change behavior patterns. CBT focuses on small experiments and new ways of thinking to reduce symptoms like anxiety and low mood.She also draws on Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and improving interpersonal effectiveness. These skills are helpful for intense emotions, relationship strain, and coping with sudden stressors.
Attachment-based and psychodynamic ideas inform how Alison looks at relationship patterns and early life experiences. That work helps people connect current struggles to past events and build more helpful ways of relating.
Choosing the right approach is collaborative. The therapist will listen to your concerns, goals, and preferences, and then suggest methods to try. It’s common to mix techniques over time and adjust based on what helps most.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for in-depth conversations and reading nonverbal cues. Phone sessions can work when bandwidth is limited or a camera isn’t practical. Live chat and text messaging are helpful for shorter check-ins, quick skill practice, or fitting therapy into a busy day.
Questions people ask
What kinds of concerns does Alison address?
What is her general approach in sessions?
How much clinical experience does she have?
What credentials and location does she hold?
Are sessions offered in other languages or to international clients?
What session formats are available?
How does billing and cost work?
How do I begin working with her?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Bipolar disorder
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 3 years
- Licensed
- Illinois, Colorado
- Languages
- English
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.