About Marilyn
Marilyn Rukaj is a licensed counselor who helps people manage stress and anxiety. She supports individuals who are dealing with relationships, trauma, low self-esteem, and depression. Marilyn speaks plainly and offers steady guidance for someone feeling overwhelmed.
She holds licenses as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and a Licensed Professional Counselor. Over seven years she has worked with adults facing abandonment wounds, attachment struggles, communication problems, caregiving stress, chronic illness, and related concerns.
Background and approach
Her background spans common life stresses and more complex emotional challenges. Sessions focus on practical conversation and problem solving. Marilyn tailors the pace and topics to each person’s needs.
She aims to make each meeting feel focused and useful, with steps people can try between sessions. Her approach centers on respect, sensitivity, and compassion. She works with clients to identify patterns that keep them stuck and to build different ways of coping.
Marilyn emphasizes realistic goals and small changes that add up over time. People who choose her often want straightforward support for feeling less anxious, improving self-worth, and repairing communication in close relationships. She offers a calm presence while helping clients try new behaviors and think through difficult choices.
Marilyn practices from New Jersey and speaks English. She will work with you to create a plan that fits your life and your goals for therapy.
Approaches and online options for anxiety and stress
Many clients find benefit from straightforward, evidence-based techniques that focus on changing unhelpful thoughts and building new habits. One common approach helps people identify anxious thoughts, test them against reality, and try small behavioral experiments to see different outcomes. This method often helps with worry, panic, and day-to-day anxiety.Another useful approach emphasizes skills for managing emotions and improving relationships. It teaches ways to notice emotional triggers, calm the body, and communicate needs more clearly. That can help with low self-esteem, relationship conflict, and the fallout from trauma or abandonment issues.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will listen to your needs and goals, then suggest strategies to try. Clients and therapist decide collaboratively which techniques feel most helpful and adjust them over time.
Online therapy offers flexibility for busy schedules and different comfort levels. Video calls let you work face-to-face when you want real-time interaction. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging allow ongoing support between sessions and fit people who prefer written communication. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent while still fitting it into everyday life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Traumatic brain injury
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
- Experience
- 7 years
- Licensed
- New York, New Jersey
- Languages
- English
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