About Penelope
Penelope "Penny" McBride is a licensed clinical social worker who uses a client-centered approach to help people manage anxiety and stress. She draws on 26 years of practice in New York to offer steady, practical support for common struggles like worry, grief, and life transitions. Her style is straightforward and compassionate.
Sessions focus on understanding what feels most urgent and learning concrete skills to cope. She helps clients improve communication, manage strong emotions, and make clearer decisions about work and relationships.
Background and approach
Penny combines cognitive behavioral methods with attachment-informed thinking to spot unhelpful patterns and try new ways of relating. She also uses techniques from dialectical behavior therapy when emotions feel overwhelming. These tools aim to reduce anxiety symptoms and increase emotional balance over time.
Her background includes long experience with addiction, trauma and mood concerns such as depression and bipolar disorder. She supports people dealing with parenting stress, caregiving strain, body image and issues rooted in family of origin. Penny often addresses challenges around intimacy, commitment, and coping with major life changes.
People who meet with her work on small, achievable goals between sessions. Therapy can include skill practice, guided reflection, and changes to daily routines. Her approach is collaborative - she partners with each person to find what fits their life and values.
How attachment, CBT, and DBT translate to online care
Attachment-based work focuses on how early relationships shape current reactions. It helps people notice patterns in close relationships and try different, healthier ways of connecting. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches practical steps to reduce anxiety and change unhelpful thinking. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers skills for managing intense emotions, improving distress tolerance, and strengthening interpersonal effectiveness.Choosing an approach is collaborative. The therapist listens to the client’s goals and tries methods that fit their needs and preferences. Over the first few sessions she and the client will decide whether to emphasize skills training, relationship work, or a mix of both, adjusting as progress unfolds.
Online formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and guided exercises. Phone sessions can be used when lower bandwidth or a hands-free option is needed. Live chat and text messaging are useful for brief check-ins, homework support, or quick tools between sessions. These options offer flexibility so people can practice skills and get steady support without changing their daily routine.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 26 years
- Licensed
- New York
- Languages
- English
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