About Maria
Maria Clara Salazar-Pretto is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people manage anxiety, stress, and life transitions. She offers straightforward support for worries about work, relationships, parenting, grief, trauma, and self-esteem. Her manner is warm and direct, helping people find practical steps to feel steadier day to day.
She brings 20 years of experience in hospitals, health centers, and personal agencies. Maria Clara earned a master's degree in social work from California State University, Fresno, and earlier studied clinical psychology.
Background and approach
She grew up bilingual in Spanish and English and draws on both cultures when she talks with people. Her approach is client-centered and goal oriented. Sessions focus on useful skills and small changes that fit a person’s life.
She often uses cognitive behavioral techniques to identify unhelpful thoughts and build better coping habits, along with solution-focused ideas to move quickly toward practical goals. Mindfulness and dialectical skills appear when people need help managing strong emotions or reducing reactivity. In-session she listens, reflects, and validates while offering clear tools to try between meetings.
She frames therapy as collaborative work rather than a one-size-fits-all program. Maria Clara also supports people dealing with parenting strain, compassion fatigue, ADHD, grief, intimacy concerns, and relationship communication problems. Sessions are offered in English and Spanish, and she welcomes people who want to work through both everyday stress and deeper life changes.
How practical therapies work online
Maria Clara often blends client-centered listening with cognitive behavioral therapy to help people spot unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviors. CBT focuses on identifying thinking patterns and teaching concrete coping techniques useful for anxiety, stress, and depression.She also uses dialectical behavior therapy skills and mindfulness practices to help regulate strong emotions and reduce reactivity. DBT-style skills teach grounding, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation while mindfulness helps people notice thoughts and feelings without getting swept away.
Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the work. She collaborates with each person to set goals, test tools, and adjust methods based on what helps most. Clients and therapist decide together whether to emphasize skill practice, problem solving, or emotion regulation at any stage.
Online sessions are available by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to match different needs. Video is good for longer therapy sessions that benefit from face-to-face interaction. Phone sessions can fit into a workday or be used when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging work for quick check-ins, brief coaching, or ongoing support between meetings. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent while fitting it into a busy life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- 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
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English, Spanish
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