About Stacey
Stacey Sugar is a therapist who uses attachment-based and client-centered ways of working to help people manage stress and anxiety. She brings 14 years of clinical experience and an MD plus clinical counseling credentials to her practice in California. Her style is warm and direct, focused on helping people understand patterns that keep them stuck.
Stacey helps clients notice how early relationships shape current reactions. She uses clear, practical steps to reduce overwhelming feelings and to build more stable connections with others.
Background and approach
Sessions aim to identify automatic thoughts and behaviors and then test new, healthier responses. Her approach also draws on cognitive behavioral techniques and existential ideas to help people find meaning and make choices that match their values. Hypnotherapy may be used when appropriate to support change in habits or to access deeper emotional material.
The overall focus is on usable strategies, not just insight. Stacey works with a wide range of concerns including relationship and intimacy difficulties, coping with life changes, addictions, grief, trauma and abuse, and self-esteem problems. She also addresses more specific issues such as abandonment, attachment wounds, codependency, communication problems, and isolation.
People who come to Stacey can expect a partner who listens, asks practical questions, and offers tools they can try between sessions. She encourages steady progress at a pace that feels manageable, helping each person rewrite parts of their life story with greater awareness and choice.
How Stacey’s approaches translate to online therapy
Stacey uses attachment-based work to look at how early relationships shape current feelings and reactions, helping clients build safer ways of relating. Client-centered therapy gives space for each person to lead the pace and focus of sessions while the therapist offers empathic listening and gentle reflection. Cognitive behavioral techniques target unhelpful thoughts and routines with concrete exercises that can be practiced between sessions.Finding the right approach is part of the work itself. Stacey collaborates with each person to choose methods that fit their goals and preferences. Together they try different tools and adjust the plan based on what helps most, keeping the relationship and the client’s needs central to the process.
Online sessions are offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video lets people read facial cues and practice interpersonal skills. Phone sessions use less bandwidth and can be easier during a busy day. Live chat or messaging supports shorter check-ins, quick processing after a difficult moment, or ongoing reflection without needing to be on camera. These options help people fit therapy into real life and keep momentum between appointments.
Questions people ask
What concerns does Stacey commonly address?
How would you describe her therapeutic style?
What is her professional background?
Where is she based and what credentialing is listed?
Which languages are sessions offered in?
What session formats are available for online work?
How are costs and billing handled?
What steps are involved to begin therapy?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- Maryland, California
- Languages
- English
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.