About Amy
Amy Shafer is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with three decades of experience in California. She focuses on practical help for stress, anxiety, grief, depression, and life transitions. Amy aims to make therapy clear and usable for people feeling overwhelmed or stuck.
She uses approaches that center the person's goals and everyday concerns. Sessions often focus on problem-solving, emotion work, and building skills to manage stress and sleep problems. Amy draws on methods that help people notice thoughts, clarify values, and practice small behavior changes.
Background and approach
Her work includes supporting people facing relationship strains, family of origin issues, caregiving burdens, chronic illness, and addiction-related concerns. She also addresses intimacy-related problems, communication difficulties, and patterns like codependency or avoidant personality tendencies. These topics are tackled with attention to what is practical right now.
Over 30 years in multiple settings has shaped a flexible, down-to-earth style. Amy helps people break big problems into manageable steps, practice new responses, and evaluate what works. She emphasizes compassionate listening while offering concrete tools to try between sessions.
Therapy is collaborative and paced to each person. Amy helps clarify goals, track progress, and adjust strategies over time. Her practice is based in California and sessions are offered in English.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them. It focuses on clarifying personal values and taking small, value-driven actions to reduce suffering from anxiety and life transitions.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions. It offers concrete strategies to challenge unhelpful thinking and practice behavior changes that can improve mood, sleep, and everyday functioning.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, try methods that fit those goals, and adjust based on what helps. That collaborative process helps match techniques to each person's needs and preferences.
Online therapy makes these approaches accessible through several formats. Video calls are useful for face-to-face conversation and guided exercises. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or when someone needs a shorter check-in. Live chat and text-based messaging allow brief, flexible communication between sessions and can help maintain momentum when scheduling is tight.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 30 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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