About Donna
Donna Jeane Pappas is a licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor who helps people feeling weighed down by stress and anxiety. She meets people where they are and focuses on clear, practical steps that fit their life. Her style is respectful, supportive, and nonjudgmental.
Her work often suits people facing grief, major health concerns, or significant life changes. She also helps with career transitions, parenting challenges, caregiving stress, and redefining identity after retirement or empty nesting.
Background and approach
Many come seeking greater clarity, alignment, and a sense of purpose. With 32 years of experience in North Carolina, she blends clinical counseling with a coaching-oriented approach. Sessions aim to clarify goals, build on strengths, and identify small, manageable steps forward.
The focus is usually on current concerns and practical strategies rather than long explorations of the past. Her practice draws on approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Client-Centered Therapy to help people reduce worry, shift unhelpful thoughts, and act in line with their values. Motivational Interviewing and Narrative Therapy are also part of her toolkit when useful.
She has substantial experience supporting people coping with serious illness, caregiving demands, and loss, and she brings that background into conversations about meaning and life purpose. The aim is to cultivate resilience and a richer day-to-day experience even during hard seasons. People who prefer a collaborative, forward-focused process tend to do well in her practice.
If you want practical tools and a partner for intentional change, her approach is designed to help you move toward the life you want.
Therapies that translate well to online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on identifying personal values and taking small actions that align with them. It helps people reduce the hold of anxious thoughts and move toward a life that matters to them. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts affect feelings and behavior and teaches practical skills for shifting unhelpful patterns, which is useful for anxiety and stress. Client-Centered Therapy centers on listening and empathy, giving people a respectful space to sort out decisions and build self-understanding.Finding the right approach is part of the process. The therapist will work together with each person to choose methods that match their goals and situation. That collaborative process can include trying different techniques and adjusting the plan based on what feels most helpful.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make scheduling easier. Video works well for deeper conversations and visual cues, phone can be a simpler option when bandwidth is limited, and text or chat is useful for brief check-ins or when someone prefers not to use video. These options make it easier to fit sessions into busy days and to continue care across distances.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Family conflicts
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 32 years
- Licensed
- North Carolina
- Languages
- English
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