About Lori
Lori Smith is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Virginia who works with adults dealing with anxiety and life transitions. She commonly supports women in their mid-20s to mid-40s who are navigating relationship questions, parenting challenges, career shifts, and stress. Her style is straightforward and practical, aimed at helping people feel steadier day to day.
Lori uses a simple metaphor to guide sessions: she pictures a hammock supported by four poles - body, mind, emotions, and spirit.
Background and approach
Work begins by seeing which pole needs attention and then building small, doable changes. That might mean trying breathing exercises, adjusting sleep habits, or adding movement to ease physical tension. She also helps people notice thoughts that raise anxiety and practices new ways of talking to themselves.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is part of this work and is used to identify unhelpful thinking and test different behaviors. Lori mixes practical communication skills, reading suggestions, and career-focused planning when relevant. Emotional processing is another focus.
She helps clients name feelings, practice expressing them, and find supportive peer or community connections. When a person feels worn out, Lori invites gentle exploration of spiritual life as another source of strength. Sessions are conversational and goal-oriented.
Lori aims to make progress in real life, not just in the therapy room, by giving concrete tools and homework people can try between meetings.
How CBT and practical strategies translate to online care
CBT focuses on finding and testing thoughts that increase anxiety and on practicing new behaviors to change how you feel. In sessions Lori helps people identify patterns of thinking, try small behavior experiments, and use simple homework to build confidence between meetings.She also works on body-centered skills such as breathing exercises, sleep routines, and paced movement to lower stress levels. These concrete practices are taught in-session and repeated at home so clients can notice small improvements in day-to-day life.
Choosing a therapeutic approach is a team effort. Lori will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what has worked before, then suggest methods to try. She checks in and adjusts plans as needed so the approach fits the client's life and aims.
Online therapy with Lori includes video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for more in-depth skill teaching and role-play. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth or camera use is limited. Live chat and messaging work well for brief check-ins, reminders, and written exercises between longer sessions. These options make scheduling more flexible and help people keep momentum while managing busy days.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Parenting issues
- Coping with life changes
Also listed
- ADHD
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Compassion fatigue
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Grief
- Multicultural concerns
- Self esteem
- Stress, Anxiety
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 27 years
- Licensed
- Virginia
- Languages
- English
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