About Andrea
Dr. Andrea Shirley is a California-based licensed marriage and family therapist with 27 years of experience. She works with people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, grief, relationship strain, LGBT concerns, and self-esteem struggles.
She emphasizes practical steps and steady support rather than quick fixes. Andrea aims to make the first step feel manageable for someone who is worried or overwhelmed. Andrea believes each person knows their own story best.
Background and approach
Sessions focus on listening closely, identifying strengths, and choosing small, achievable goals. She uses clear, straightforward methods to help people manage anxiety, improve communication, and rebuild trust after trauma or loss. Her work often centers on present-day problems and immediate coping strategies.
Andrea draws on client-centered and solution-focused ideas to help people notice what already works and build from there. For deeper wounds, she incorporates trauma-focused approaches to address painful memories at a pace that fits the person. People who meet with Andrea can expect a collaborative space for sorting options.
She helps parents, caregivers, and professionals cope with life changes, burnout, and compassion fatigue. Practical tools for sleep, anger, and stress management are common parts of sessions. Andrea also supports concerns around attachment, adoption and foster care issues, chronic illness, and major transitions like divorce.
Her style is steady and respectful, aimed at helping people make concrete changes that matter in daily life.
Approaches for online work and managing anxiety
Client-centered therapy begins by treating the person as the expert on their own life. The therapist listens, reflects what matters to the person, and helps them choose goals that feel achievable. This approach is helpful for people wanting a respectful space to sort through feelings and make changes.Narrative therapy focuses on the stories people tell about themselves. In sessions the therapist helps separate the person from the problem and find alternative storylines that support coping, identity, and resilience. This can be useful for people dealing with shame, identity questions, or relationship patterns.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the person about their goals and preferences and suggest methods that fit those needs. Together they adjust the plan over time based on what helps most.
Online sessions can use video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video works well for deeper conversations where seeing facial cues matters. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited. Chat or text messaging can suit quick check-ins, coaching-style support, or times when writing feels clearer. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and keep progress moving forward.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 27 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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