About Mary-Louise
Mary-Louise Henson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 25 years of experience practicing in California. She focuses on helping people manage stress and anxiety and cope with life changes. Her approach is straightforward and practical, aimed at making therapy accessible and understandable for busy adults.
She listens without judgment and helps clients name what matters most to them. Sessions center on clear goals and steps clients can try between appointments.
Background and approach
She draws on methods that teach skills for day-to-day life and for handling big emotional moments. Mary-Louise often works on relationship and family concerns, including communication problems, blended family issues, and separation or divorce matters. She also addresses depression, body image, eating and food-related issues, and feelings of guilt, shame, or isolation.
Veterans and people facing midlife or career transitions may find her practical focus helpful. Her style combines structured techniques with calm, attentive listening. She helps people break problems into manageable parts and practices new ways of thinking and responding.
Mindfulness and brief solution-focused steps are used alongside cognitive techniques to reduce worry and increase coping skills. Therapy begins with a clear conversation about goals and what a client hopes to change. From there she and the client map out simple steps and check progress regularly.
The work aims to build skills people can use long after sessions end.
Online approaches that reduce worry and build skills
Mary-Louise uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors that feed anxiety and low mood. CBT focuses on practical steps and experiments clients can try between sessions to test new ways of thinking.She also draws on Mindfulness Therapy to teach simple attention and breathing practices that reduce reactivity and improve calm. Mindfulness helps people stay present and manage stress in daily life. Solution-Focused Therapy is used to identify small, realistic goals and build on what already works, so progress happens quickly and feels manageable.
Choosing the right mix of approaches is part of the process. She works together with each client to decide which methods fit their needs, goals, and preferences. That collaborative planning guides what is tried in early sessions and what gets adjusted later.
Online therapy here is offered by licensed professionals through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is useful for fuller conversation and visual cues, phone can be easier when bandwidth is limited, and messaging works well for brief check-ins or ongoing support between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and keep continuity when schedules change.
Questions people ask
What concerns does she commonly address?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How much experience does she have?
What are her credentials and where is she based?
Which languages are sessions offered in?
Can people outside the U.S. work with her?
What session formats are available online?
How do costs and scheduling work?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Family problems
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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