About Valerie
Valerie Johnson-Cardoso is a licensed mental health counselor with three decades of experience. She focuses on helping people who are overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief, addictions, and major life changes. Her style is straightforward and calm, aimed at creating safety so clients can talk without fear of judgment.
She spent many years working in residential mental health and substance abuse settings in Florida and Pennsylvania. She also taught for 16 years, supporting students with learning differences, autism, and emotional challenges while running a independent practice in evenings and weekends.
Background and approach
That mix of school, agency, and personal work shapes how she sees problems and solutions. Valerie believes therapy is a team effort. She talks with clients about small, practical steps that can bring more calm and control to daily life.
She helps people notice how self-criticism gets in the way and practices ways to respond differently to painful thoughts and urges. Her background includes supporting people through religious trauma and faith transitions, as well as working in homes and day treatment programs with a wide age range. This gives her experience with varied life situations and coping needs.
She draws on several approaches to match what each person prefers. In sessions she aims to build trust quickly and make it easy to name feelings. The work is paced to each person, focusing on skills and understanding that help in everyday life.
Valerie welcomes conversations that begin with a single question or a longer story.
How Valerie’s Approaches Translate to Online Sessions
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice painful thoughts without getting swept away by them and choose actions that match their values. It is useful for anxiety, stress, and coping with life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thinking patterns and practicing new behaviors to reduce symptoms like worry and low mood. It works well for anxiety, depression, and many daily challenges. Client-Centered Therapy places the person’s experience at the center, with the therapist offering empathy and nonjudgmental listening to help people feel heard and understood.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Valerie collaborates with each person to decide what fits best based on their goals and preferences. She combines ideas from these approaches as needed and checks in regularly to make sure the plan still feels helpful.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions use less bandwidth and can be easier during a work break. Live chat and text are useful for shorter check-ins or when typing feels more comfortable. These options let people fit therapy into real life and try different formats to see what works best.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Hypnotherapy
- Imago Relationship Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 30 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English
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