About Ellen
Ellen Golding is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 17 years of clinical work in California. She helps people manage stress and anxiety, work through relationship challenges, and cope with grief and loss. She also supports recovery from eating concerns and people navigating polyamory or non-monogamous relationships.
Her style is direct and compassionate. Sessions focus on what feels most urgent to the client. She offers a calm space where thoughts and feelings can be spoken plainly without judgment.
Background and approach
The therapist aims to help people find practical steps they can try between sessions. In the room she listens first, then helps clients set clear, manageable goals. Conversations often include problem-solving, behavior changes, and ways to reduce daily stress.
Ellen encourages small experiments to test what works in real life rather than long debates about why something happened. Her work is rooted in evidence-based therapeutic techniques that emphasize skills practice and active collaboration. She frames progress as steady, measurable changes instead of overnight fixes.
People who come for relationship help get tools for clearer communication and setting boundaries. Ellen believes starting therapy takes courage and that the therapist role is to support and empower. New clients are guided through a simple intake and goal-setting process so sessions move toward concrete improvements.
She practices in California and conducts sessions in English.
Approaches that translate to online care
Many of the techniques Ellen uses focus on skills practice and clear behavior changes. One common approach emphasizes teaching specific coping skills for anxiety and stress, such as breathing strategies, activity planning, and breaking problems into manageable steps. These skills are easy to practice between sessions and work well over video or phone.Another helpful method centers on improving communication and boundaries in relationships. This involves role-playing conversations, learning how to state needs clearly, and trying short communication experiments at home. These activities can be supported in live chat or video sessions and reviewed in follow-up text check-ins.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will listen to your goals, try methods that fit your daily life, and adjust based on what helps most. Clients and therapist decide together which techniques to keep using and which to change.
Online formats offer practical advantages. Video calls let you use visual cues and do role-plays, phone sessions can be simpler when bandwidth is limited, live chat is useful for brief check-ins, and text messaging supports ongoing reminders and homework. These options make scheduling easier and let therapy fit around work, family, and other commitments.
Questions people ask
What concerns does Ellen help with?
How would you describe her therapeutic style?
How much clinical experience does she have?
Where is she licensed and based?
What languages are sessions offered in?
Can international clients work with her?
What session formats are available?
How do fees and getting started work?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also listed
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Experience
- 17 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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