About Allison
Dr. Allison Bethea began her career in clinical psychology in the early 1990s and brings two decades of experience to her work. She holds an MD and has practiced in Maryland since the 1990s.
Her approach centers on building a cooperative relationship and using a client's strengths to guide care. She focuses on anxiety and stress along with depression and coping with attention differences such as ADHD. She also helps people facing grief, sleep problems, anger, low self-esteem, and life transitions.
Background and approach
Additional interests include trauma and abuse, sexual and gender identity concerns, and concerns related to chronic illness or disability. In sessions she uses clear, practical methods drawn from cognitive behavioral work and mindfulness. She also draws on existential ideas about meaning and uses solution-focused steps to set short-term goals.
Internal Family Systems is another approach she may bring in to help people understand different parts of themselves. Dr. Bethea is interested in how physical health and brain function affect mood and behavior, and she factors that into treatment planning.
She has experience supporting people who are blind or have visual impairments, and parents of children with special needs. Her tone is collaborative and goal-oriented, with an emphasis on skills people can use between sessions. Her practice offers video, phone, live chat, and text-based messaging to make care more flexible.
Sessions are arranged through a matching and scheduling process so people can find a time that fits their life.
How her approaches translate to online therapy
CBT focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and changing behaviors step by step. Online sessions can include behavioral experiments, thought records, and homework that a person completes between meetings to reduce anxiety and improve mood.Mindfulness Therapy teaches simple attention and breathing practices to reduce reactivity and increase calm. These practices can be guided during a video call or reinforced with short audio or text exercises sent between sessions.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Dr. Bethea will collaborate with each person to choose methods that match their goals, symptoms, and daily life. She will adjust techniques over time based on what proves most helpful.
Online formats offer practical flexibility. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and demonstration of skills. Phone sessions provide an option when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging support brief updates, coaching, and quick coping reminders between synchronous sessions. Together these options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to keep momentum between meetings.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Parenting issues
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Visually impaired
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Maryland
- Languages
- English
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