About Kristel
Kristel Avilus is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with seven years of practice helping people facing anxiety and other stressful life challenges. She offers a warm, interactive style and focuses on building a respectful, supportive working relationship from the start. She often helps people who are coping with depression, anxiety, relationship strain, parenting stress, and career transitions.
Kristel also supports those processing trauma and abuse, grief, addictions, and issues around intimacy and self-esteem.
Background and approach
Her background includes work with clients who have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional trauma. Her way of working blends practical strategies with a person-centered stance. She draws on cognitive behavioral ideas to identify unhelpful thinking and ACT techniques to clarify values and take meaningful action.
Kristel also uses tools from dialectical behavior therapy and emotionally-focused approaches when emotion regulation or attachment patterns are central. Sessions are conversational and goal-oriented. Kristel tailors the pace and techniques to each person's needs, and she avoids labels that feel stigmatizing.
She aims to help people build coping skills, improve communication, and make steady changes that match their values and life priorities. People who want help sorting through past hurts, improving relationships, or managing anxiety will find practical steps and steady support in her room. Kristel invites motivated clients to take the first step toward clearer goals and healthier patterns.
Therapeutic approaches you can use online
Kristel uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help people clarify what matters most and take values-guided action even when anxiety or painful feelings show up. ACT often focuses on small experiments and practical steps that fit daily life.She also draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to spot unhelpful thinking and try different behavior patterns. CBT is useful for managing anxiety, sleep problems, and low mood by teaching specific tools for shifting thoughts and routines.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Kristel will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn't helped before, and then adapt methods over time so therapy stays useful and relevant.
Online formats offered include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video sessions allow face-to-face interaction for skills practice and deeper conversation. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or when a quieter check-in is needed. Live chat and messaging make it easier to fit brief check-ins into a busy day or to get ongoing support between longer sessions. These options give flexibility to match therapy to schedules and symptoms while keeping work focused on clear goals and practical tools.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hearing impaired
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 7 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English
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