About Sharmen
Sharmen Rutherford is a licensed professional counselor with 16 years of clinical experience. She approaches therapy with a focus on helping people manage stress and anxiety and navigate life when it feels overwhelming. She uses practical strategies to help clients handle addictions, trauma and abuse, eating concerns, depression, grief, and sleep problems.
Sessions also address anger, self-esteem, career worries, bipolar mood challenges, ADHD, and compassion fatigue. Sharmen listens and helps people find small, doable changes that add up over time.
Background and approach
Her work draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, cognitive behavioral tools, mindfulness practices, dialectical behavior strategies, and a client-centered stance. That mix supports goal-setting, emotion regulation, and building routines that reduce distress. She adapts techniques to what each person needs and prefers.
Sharmen holds LPC-MHSP and LPC credentials and practices in Alabama. She has background helping people facing substance use and co-occurring concerns alongside mood and trauma-related issues. Her years of experience include work with eating-related struggles and first responder concerns.
Therapy with her usually starts by identifying immediate concerns and realistic next steps. Sessions aim to create practical skills for day-to-day life and steady progress toward longer-term goals. Sharmen frames therapy as collaborative and goal-focused to help people move toward a more manageable future.
Therapeutic approaches for online anxiety and life stress
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings and focus on actions that match their values. It is often useful for anxiety, stress, and coping with life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and uses practical exercises to change unhelpful patterns. It commonly helps with anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and some eating concerns.Finding the right approach is part of therapy. The therapist will work together with each person to choose methods that fit their concerns, goals, and daily routine. That collaborative process means techniques can be adjusted over time based on what helps most.
Online sessions come in several formats: video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and skill demonstrations. Phone sessions reduce bandwidth needs and can fit into a work break. Live chat and text are useful for brief check-ins, homework support, and people who prefer writing. These options make therapy more flexible and easier to fit into a busy life.
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What this therapist works with
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 16 years
- Licensed
- Alabama, Tennessee
- Languages
- English
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