About Shelly
Shelly Flachs is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) based in Illinois who focuses on helping people manage anxiety and stress. She brings 12 years of clinical experience to sessions and aims to create a respectful, strengths-based space for problem solving and healing. Her style is practical and collaborative.
She uses straightforward methods from cognitive behavioral approaches and mindfulness to help people change patterns that cause distress. Shelly also draws on emotion-focused ideas to help people understand difficult feelings and how those feelings show up in relationships.
Background and approach
Clients often bring concerns such as depression, trauma and abuse, grief, bipolar disorder, addiction, eating and sleeping problems, anger, self-esteem issues, and ADHD. Shelly also supports people with career stress, caregiving strain, compassion fatigue, and major life transitions. She works with issues related to intimacy, communication, and boundaries as well.
Sessions are aimed at identifying clear goals and building small, workable steps toward those goals. Shelly uses evidence-informed tools like behavioral experiments, mindfulness practices, and emotion-focused processing to help people cope day to day. She emphasizes skill building so people can use new strategies between sessions.
Therapy can address longer-term patterns as well as immediate problems. People coming in for help with anxiety will find a focus on practical changes, emotional understanding, and learning tools that fit daily life. Her approach is steady, respectful, and goal-oriented.
Evidence-informed approaches for online care
Shelly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help people notice and change unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns. CBT often involves setting small goals, trying behavioral experiments, and learning practical skills to reduce anxiety and improve mood.She also uses Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills and Mindfulness Therapy techniques. DBT-style skills focus on emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and clearer communication. Mindfulness practices teach simple attention and breathing exercises that can reduce reactivity and improve daily functioning.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. Shelly will talk with each person about their needs and goals and adapt techniques over time. This collaborative process helps match methods to what feels manageable and useful for the client.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy fit busy lives. Video can be useful for face-to-face interaction and skill practice. Phone sessions work well when internet bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to be on camera. Live chat and text messaging allow shorter check-ins and ongoing support between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, caregiving schedules, or other daily demands.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Iowa
- Languages
- English
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