About Maria
Maria Ward is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California with 13 years of experience. She works with people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, trauma, mood shifts, and addiction. Maria speaks English and Spanish and aims to make the first step feel manageable for anyone reaching out.
She believes clients are the experts on their own lives and brings practical tools to support their goals. Sessions focus on concrete skills people can use between meetings, like managing strong emotions, improving communication, and building routines that reduce anxiety.
Background and approach
Maria listens, reflects, and helps people try small changes that add up. Her work draws on approaches that look at thoughts, values, and relationships. She uses techniques to help people notice unhelpful thinking patterns and test new behaviors.
Attachment-informed ideas are used when relationship patterns and early losses are part of the concern. Maria has helped people facing a wide range of life challenges including grief, parenting strains, intimacy concerns, body image struggles, career stress, and caregiving burden. She also offers support around addiction, domestic violence recovery, and mood disorders.
Conversations are straightforward and paced to each person's needs. For those who prefer Spanish, she can hold sessions in that language. Maria helps people identify what matters to them, set small achievable steps, and track progress over time.
She frames therapy as a collaborative process where practical problems meet thoughtful support.
Therapeutic approaches for online care
Maria uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help people spot unhelpful thoughts and test new behaviors that reduce anxiety and low mood. CBT sessions often include simple experiments and practical homework to change patterns that cause distress.She also draws on attachment-based therapy to look at how early relationship patterns affect current connections and emotional responses. This approach can help when trust, abandonment, or recurring conflicts show up in relationships.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. Maria collaborates with clients to choose methods that fit their values, goals, and daily life. She checks in regularly and adjusts techniques based on what is helpful and what is not.
Online therapy offers flexibility across video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for deeper conversations and visual cues, phone calls can fit into a short break, and messaging lets people check in between sessions or use brief written updates. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around work, caregiving, or travel while still focusing on skills and progress.
Questions people ask
What concerns does Maria help with?
What is her general therapy style?
How much experience does she have?
What credentials and region are listed?
Which languages are available for sessions?
What session formats does she offer?
How does cost work?
How do I begin working with her?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Anger management
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Gottman Method
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 13 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English, Spanish
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.