About Lesley
Lesley Schwam is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) based in California. She brings 12 years of clinical experience and uses practical approaches to help people manage anxiety, stress, and life changes. She favors straightforward methods that focus on changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors.
Lesley helps clients build coping skills for panic, depression, grief, and trauma-related reactions. Sessions emphasize clear goals and steps to move forward. Early work with clients centered on daily coping and self-care.
Background and approach
Over time she added structured strategies for communication, boundary setting, and managing difficult emotions. That mix helps people who struggle with relationship tension, career transitions, or addictive behaviors. Her sessions often begin with short-term goals and simple coping tools.
Lesley guides people to practice new habits between visits. Small, consistent changes are used to reduce symptoms and improve functioning. She also addresses deeper concerns such as family of origin issues, guilt, shame, and chronic illness adjustment.
Therapy may include skill building for setting limits and improving communication. The aim is practical progress rather than vague promises. Lesley works in English and sees clients in California.
She offers video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. To start, people complete a brief matching questionnaire and schedule sessions that fit their needs.
How CBT and Solution-Focused Work Online
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps identify unhelpful thoughts and test new behaviors to reduce anxiety and low mood. In simple steps it teaches skill-based tools like thought records and behavioral experiments to manage panic, worry, and depressive patterns.Solution-Focused Therapy concentrates on goals and small changes that move a person forward. Sessions focus on strengths and practical next steps rather than revisiting every problem, which can be helpful for career shifts, relationship issues, and coping with life transitions.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t helped before. Together they decide whether to emphasize skill-building, goal-focused coaching, or a mix of both.
Online sessions using video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging make therapy more flexible. Video is useful for in-depth conversations and practicing skills with visual cues. Phone calls can fit into a work break and need less bandwidth. Live chat and text-based messaging work well for short check-ins, ongoing support, and tracking homework between sessions.
These options allow people to match a format to their schedule and needs while working with a licensed professional to address anxiety, stress, and life change.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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