About Joan
Joan French is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) with 17 years of experience supporting adults through stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and major life changes. She welcomes people who feel isolated, unheard, or overwhelmed and focuses on helping them reconnect with themselves and others. Joan aims to build a trusting, nonjudgmental space where people can say difficult things.
She works in plain language and encourages honesty, gentle humor, and practical steps.
Background and approach
Her goal is to help clients feel understood and less alone. Her approach draws from several evidence-informed methods such as cognitive behavioral techniques, dialectical behavior strategies, and emotionally focused work. She also uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ideas and client-centered listening to tailor sessions to each person’s needs.
Joan describes her style as patient, creative, and resourceful. She sometimes uses art-based exercises to help people express feelings they struggle to name. She also practices trauma-aware care and attention to attachment and abandonment concerns.
She works with adults 18 and older, including people who identify as LGBTQIA2S+ or who are questioning gender identity. Joan helps with relationship strains, family-of-origin issues, communication problems, codependency, and challenges around commitment and control. Joan earned a Master of Arts in Community Counseling from Governors State University and completed an Art Therapy certificate at Northwestern University.
She offers sessions by video, phone, live chat, or text messaging and uses a subscription model that can be canceled at any time.
Approaches that shape online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, and then move toward values-based action. It can be useful for anxiety, stress, and coping with life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at thinking patterns and behavior to reduce symptoms like worry, low mood, and sleep problems through practical exercises and skill building. Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) focuses on emotions and connection to address relationship distress and attachment-related pain.Finding the right approach is part of therapy, and Joan treats this as a team effort. She will talk with each person about their goals, try methods that fit their concerns, and adjust what she uses based on what helps. This collaborative process aims to match tools to the client's needs and preferences rather than forcing a single method.
Online therapy with Joan is offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to give practical flexibility. Video is useful for longer sessions and interactive exercises. Phone sessions can work when bandwidth is limited or for a quick check-in. Live chat and text messaging allow short updates, coaching between sessions, or people who prefer typed communication. These options help people fit therapy into work, caregiving, or busy schedules while keeping focus on real progress.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Attachment issues
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 17 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
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