About Margarita
Margarita Araiza-Johnston is a licensed clinical social worker who blends practical therapy with a calm, direct style. She uses clear methods to help people manage anxiety, stress, grief, and changes in family life. Margarita speaks both English and Spanish and brings ten years of clinical experience in social work to her practice.
She trained at Tulane University, where she earned a Master of Social Work, and previously completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology.
Background and approach
Early work with children and families informed her approach and led to roles in hospice care and crisis counseling. Those settings shaped how she responds to intense, urgent situations. Margarita uses Attachment-Based Therapy to look at how relationships shape emotions and behavior.
She pairs that with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thinking and patterns. Emotionally-Focused Therapy and Narrative Therapy also inform her work when emotion and personal story are central. Her background includes experience with domestic violence, suicide intervention, child abuse and neglect assessment, and bilingual therapy.
She has completed study in mediation and family law mediation, which supports work around separation and conflict. Margarita also offers help around intimacy concerns, sexuality topics including BDSM and kink, and relationship communication. Sessions are offered by video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging.
Margarita practices from New Mexico as an LCSW with licenses in Hawaii and California, and she frames therapy as a collaborative process tailored to each person's goals.
How attachment and behavior-focused approaches work online
Margarita often uses Attachment-Based Therapy to examine how relationships affect feelings and reactions. This approach helps people understand patterns in close relationships and develop new ways of relating when anxiety or conflict shows up.She also draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing small changes in behavior. CBT can be useful for managing anxiety, stress, and mood by giving concrete tools to try between sessions.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Margarita will collaborate with each person to pick methods that match their goals, preferences, and life situation. She adapts techniques from different approaches to meet what a person needs in session.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video sessions let people interact face to face, phone calls require less bandwidth, and messaging can be used for brief check-ins or ongoing support. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to use different formats for different concerns.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Family conflicts
- Parenting issues
- Depression
Also listed
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Multicultural concerns
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- New Mexico, Hawaii, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Arkansas, California
- Languages
- English, Spanish
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