About Debra
Debra McGuffee is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 30 years of clinical experience. She helps people who are struggling with anxiety, stress, relationship strain, depression, addiction, and grief. Her approach is warm and practical, and she offers options like Christian-based counseling if a client requests it.
Clients can expect straightforward conversations about what matters to them most. She listens first and then works with each person to set clear goals.
Background and approach
Sessions focus on communication skills, managing strong emotions, and practical steps to reduce everyday stress. Debra draws on several evidence-informed methods to guide her work. She uses client-centered techniques to help people feel heard, cognitive behavioral strategies to change unhelpful thought patterns, and dialectical behavior tools for emotion regulation.
Emotion-focused work is available for people wanting to repair connection and process painful experiences. Her background includes three decades in therapy plus many years working inside business and corporate settings. That mix helps when addressing work-related stress, career decisions, and the effects of workplace demands on relationships.
She is based in Minnesota and holds the LMFT credential, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Sessions can address a wide range of concerns from parenting strain and sleep problems to intimacy issues and compassion fatigue. Debra often asks clients to name three goals for therapy early on so sessions stay focused and practical.
She aims to help people build skills they can use between appointments.
Therapeutic approaches and online formats that fit your life
Debra commonly uses client-centered work and cognitive behavioral therapy in online sessions. Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and helping people feel understood, which helps when someone is coping with anxiety or relationship worry. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches practical skills to reduce worry and improve sleep and daily functioning.She also uses dialectical behavior therapy techniques when emotion regulation and distress tolerance are priorities. DBT skills teach ways to tolerate strong emotions, improve relationships, and manage impulses, and they can be practiced between sessions to build steady progress. Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process; the therapist will talk with each person about goals, try methods, and adjust plans based on what works best for them.
Online therapy offers flexibility by letting people connect in ways that suit their schedules. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat supports shorter check-ins, and text-based messaging helps maintain continuity between appointments. These options make it simpler to fit therapy around work, caregiving, and other commitments while using the approaches described above.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 30 years
- Licensed
- Minnesota
- Languages
- English
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