About Lara
Lara Ashbaugh is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) based in Missouri who uses practical, skills-based therapy to help people manage anxiety and stress. She brings ten years of clinical experience to sessions and focuses on clear, down-to-earth strategies people can use right away. Her work blends cognitive behavioral ideas with acceptance and commitment therapy.
Sessions often include learning new coping skills, noticing unhelpful thinking patterns, and choosing actions that fit personal values.
Background and approach
She also draws on dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness tools when emotions feel intense. Clients come for many concerns including depression, grief, self-esteem, relationship and communication challenges, and life transitions. She also supports people facing addiction, trauma or abuse, compassion fatigue, ADHD, bipolar concerns, and issues tied to gender and sexual identity.
Additional focuses include adoption and foster care, aging issues, body image, caregiver stress, and fertility concerns. Lara describes her style as warm and interactive. She aims to treat people with respect and to avoid stigmatizing labels.
Conversations and plans are tailored to each person's strengths and goals so work fits the real demands of daily life. For someone ready to make changes, she offers steady guidance and practical exercises. The focus is on building skills, noticing what already works, and taking small steps toward a more manageable day-to-day life.
How Lara Uses Skills-Based Approaches Online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on helping people notice what matters to them and take small actions toward those values while also learning to sit with difficult thoughts. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches practical tools to change patterns that cause distress. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, offers clear skills for managing strong emotions, improving relationships, and tolerating crisis moments.Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to identify goals, try different strategies, and adjust the plan based on what helps. Conversations are practical and goal-focused so the approach fits the person's life and needs.
Online therapy gives flexibility for people with busy schedules. Video calls let the work feel like an in-person session when face-to-face interaction matters. Phone sessions can be a good option when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to be on camera. Live chat and text-based messaging are useful for quick check-ins, brief coaching, or when a shorter touchpoint fits better into a day. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent while fitting work, family, and other commitments.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hearing impaired
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Missouri
- Languages
- English
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