About Valerie
Valerie Rutherford is a Licensed Independent Social Worker (LISW) based in Ohio with 18 years of experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and major life changes. Valerie works with individual adults and uses straightforward, practical methods to address everyday struggles.
She creates a warm, nonjudgmental space where people can talk through their concerns. Sessions are collaborative - she listens first, then helps set goals you both agree on.
Background and approach
Conversations often focus on skills for coping, improving communication, and building healthier routines. Valerie uses approaches that emphasize real-world tools. She draws on acceptance and commitment ideas to help people notice what matters, and cognitive methods to shift unhelpful thinking and behavior.
Mindfulness practices and client-centered techniques are woven into sessions to help people feel more grounded and understood. Her background includes work across a wide range of concerns such as parenting challenges, relationship stress, grief, trauma and abuse, eating and body-image issues, ADHD, and addictions. She also supports people facing career strain, caregiver stress, and the fallout from separation or divorce.
Her practice pays attention to the whole person, including co-occurring issues. Valerie offers flexible session formats including video calls, phone, live chat, and text messaging. The first step is a short matching questionnaire and scheduling a time that fits your life.
She aims to help people take manageable steps toward feeling better.
How Valerie’s approaches translate to online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on clarifying values and taking small committed steps toward them while accepting difficult thoughts and feelings; it can help with anxiety, stress, and motivation. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches concrete strategies to change unhelpful patterns, which is useful for anxiety, depression, and behavior change. Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes a supportive, nonjudgmental relationship where the person’s goals guide the work and helps people feel heard and understood.Finding the right mix of methods is part of the process. Valerie will work together with each person to identify goals and decide which approaches fit best. That collaborative decision-making means the plan can change as needs and preferences evolve.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation for teaching skills and practicing new behaviors. Phone sessions are an option when bandwidth or being on camera isn’t convenient. Live chat and text messaging let people check in, do shorter check-ins, or stay connected between sessions. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule and to keep steady progress over time.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 18 years
- Licensed
- Ohio
- Languages
- English
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