About Clare
Clare O'Toole is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who helps people facing anxiety, stress, depression, and relationship strain. She speaks plainly and listens closely to understand what's happening now. Clare aims to make therapy practical and reachable for everyday life.
She draws on about 20 years of experience working with adults around coping with life changes, trauma and abuse, self-esteem, and ADHD-related challenges. Sessions focus on clear goals and simple skills you can use between meetings.
Background and approach
Clare balances emotional understanding with tools that change unhelpful patterns. Her approach mixes cognitive behavioral strategies with acceptance-focused work and attention to attachment dynamics. That means she helps clients notice thoughts and feelings, choose values-based actions, and improve closeness in relationships.
The methods are adapted to each person's pace and needs. Clare also addresses practical stresses such as career pressure, caregiver strain, and compassion fatigue. She helps people manage anger, control issues, impulsivity, and problems like jealousy or guilt.
Conversations include both immediate coping techniques and longer-term changes. Therapy can include short skill-building exercises, deeper emotional processing, and coaching toward life goals. Clare offers sessions in English and works with adults in California.
She uses a collaborative style so clients help shape the work. To start, she asks about your current concerns and what you want to change. From there she helps you map a plan with steps that fit your life and schedule.
Approaches you can use in online sessions
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings without getting stuck, then choose actions that match their values. It is useful for anxiety, stress, and choosing a clear direction in life. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on the link between thoughts, feelings, and behavior, teaching tools to shift unhelpful thinking and build healthier habits; it often helps with anxiety, depression, and anger. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at patterns in how people connect to others and addresses relational wounds that keep repeating, which can be helpful for closeness, trust, and relationship conflicts.Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the work. Clare will listen to your goals and try methods that fit your needs and preferences. You and she decide together whether to focus on skills practice, emotional processing, or relationship patterns, and that plan can shift as you make progress.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for deeper conversations and role-play, phone can be an easier fit if bandwidth or camera use is an issue, and messaging or live chat work well for quick check-ins or brief coaching between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy around work, caregiving, or travel while keeping the focus on practical steps and emotional connection.
Questions people ask
What concerns does Clare commonly help with?
What is her general therapy style?
How much clinical experience does she have?
What credentials and region are listed?
Which languages are sessions offered in?
What session formats are available?
How does billing and cost work?
What are the first steps to begin therapy?
What this therapist works with
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.