About Barbara
Barbara Defazzio is a licensed mental health counselor with 40 years of professional experience. She practiced privately in Massachusetts for more than two decades and now works from Florida. She helps people dealing with stress and anxiety, as well as those coping with trauma, grief, and major life changes.
Her work centers on clear conversation and practical steps. Sessions focus on understanding what feels most urgent and testing small changes that can make daily life easier.
Background and approach
She draws on approaches that emphasize the client's perspective and problem-solving to build coping skills. Barbara has longstanding experience with sexual and physical trauma, including post-traumatic stress linked to abuse. She also has experience supporting people who grew up in foster care and families managing adoption adjustments.
That background shapes how she addresses attachment, abandonment, and family-origin concerns. Clients can expect straightforward talk about present challenges and past impacts. She uses techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy to spot unhelpful thinking patterns and solution-focused methods to set short-term goals.
Motivational interviewing helps when someone feels stuck and unsure how to change. Therapy is offered in English and is available to international clients. Sessions are scheduled using an online matching and booking process.
The first step is to complete a short questionnaire and pick a time to begin working together.
How Barbara’s Approaches Work Online
Client-centered therapy focuses on the person first. The therapist listens with attention and helps the client name what matters most. This approach is useful for people who need a steady, accepting place to sort through feelings and decisions.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at thoughts and behaviors together. It helps identify unhelpful thinking and tests new behaviors to reduce anxiety and improve coping. CBT is often used for stress, anxiety, and changing patterns that keep problems active.
Trauma-focused therapy concentrates on how traumatic experiences affect daily life now. It combines careful pacing with strategies to reduce symptoms and build safety in everyday routines. This approach is used for post-traumatic stress and recovery from sexual or physical abuse.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t helped before. Together they decide which methods to try and adjust the plan as needed.
Online therapy offers practical benefits for scheduling and access. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation when meeting in person is difficult. Phone sessions can work well when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat or text messaging lets someone share updates between sessions and keep momentum on hard days. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Post-traumatic stress
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 40 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English
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