About Crista
Crista Shaw is a licensed clinical professional counselor with 15 years of experience. She works with people facing stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, and anger. Her style is warm and down-to-earth.
She aims to make first steps feel manageable for anyone starting therapy. She focuses on creating an open space where thoughts and feelings can be shared without judgment. Sessions are guided by what each person brings, not a one-size-fits-all plan.
Background and approach
She uses practical strategies to address everyday struggles like mood shifts, overwhelm, and relationship strain. Her practice includes approaches that help with thinking patterns and emotional regulation. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people spot unhelpful thoughts and try different behaviors.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy teaches skills for managing strong emotions and improving how people cope day to day. Crista also brings trauma-focused work into sessions when past events continue to affect current life. That work is gradual and paced to what each person can handle.
She pays attention to how family history, adoption and blended family issues, and parenting stress show up in daily life. People come to Crista for help with a wide range of concerns, including grief, eating issues, sexuality, postpartum mood changes, and feelings of isolation. She supports those exploring identity and LGBT-related concerns as well.
Her approach is collaborative and focused on practical change. She practices in Maine and conducts sessions in English. The goal in her work is to help people build coping skills and make small, steady changes that improve daily life.
Therapeutic approaches suited for online care
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and responding to what each person most needs. It emphasizes respect, empathy, and working at the client’s pace, which helps people who feel unsure about where to begin. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts and behaviors influence feelings and teaches practical steps to change unhelpful patterns; it often helps with anxiety, mood concerns, and stress.Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with the person about goals, preferences, and how symptoms show up day to day. Together they try methods that fit the person’s life and adjust as needed so therapy remains useful and relevant.
Online sessions offer several practical benefits. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation when meeting in person is difficult. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging let people share thoughts between sessions and fit support into busy days. These options make it easier to build therapy into daily life while keeping the focus on progress and coping skills.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Blended family issues
- Co-morbidity
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Sexuality
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- Maine
- Languages
- English
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