About Desiree
Desiree Maldonado-Peluffo is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people who are feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, relationship strain, or life changes. She speaks English and Spanish and practices in Massachusetts. Her approach aims to help people feel more hopeful and improve how they relate to themselves and others.
She uses tools from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Mindfulness to address anxiety, depression, and mood concerns.
Background and approach
Sessions include practical skills people can use between meetings, like noticing difficult thoughts, changing unhelpful behavior patterns, and grounding attention in the present. Desiree pays attention to how past trauma and attachment patterns show up in daily life. She offers ways to reduce the control that negative emotions and harsh self-talk can exert.
That work often focuses on communication habits, boundaries, and shifting thinking that fuels codependency or fear of abandonment. People meet her to cope with specific problems such as social anxiety, seasonal mood shifts, or stress around big life changes. She also helps when issues are tangled with family conflict, commitment worries, or a sense that life lacks direction.
Therapy sessions are described in plain language and emphasize small, actionable steps. Her style is warm and non-judgmental while staying focused on real-world progress. With ten years of professional experience and an MA LICSW credential, she blends practical techniques with mindfulness practices to support steady change.
Practical approaches online: ACT, CBT, and mindfulness
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice unhelpful thoughts and choose actions that match their values. It can help when anxiety or worry keeps someone stuck and they want to take steps toward a more meaningful life.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on changing patterns of thinking and behavior that drive anxiety and low mood. It offers clear tools for managing social anxiety, panic, or negative self-talk through short exercises and behavior changes.
Mindfulness Therapy teaches ways to bring attention back to the present moment. These practices support emotion regulation, reduce rumination, and make coping skills easier to use in daily life.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to decide which methods fit best based on their goals, needs, and preferences. That decision evolves over time and can blend techniques from different methods.
Online sessions are available by video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to match different needs. Video calls are good for face-to-face conversation, phone sessions require less bandwidth and can fit a work break, live chat or text messaging can work for short check-ins or when writing feels easier. These options aim to make therapy more flexible and easier to fit into a busy life.
Questions people ask
What kinds of concerns does she address?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How long has she been practicing?
Where is she licensed and based?
Can sessions be conducted in other languages?
What formats are available for sessions?
How are sessions billed?
How do I begin working with her?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Massachusetts
- Languages
- English, Spanish
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.