About Vanessa
Vanessa Martz is an LPC with 28 years of counseling experience. She brings a long personal and professional history to her work, including military connections, parenting and foster care, and loss. She speaks plainly and aims to help people find practical ways to manage stress and anxiety and to cope with grief and life changes.
Her style is warm and direct. She often draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and grief work while welcoming other methods to meet a person's needs.
Background and approach
She says she will challenge a person's spiritual beliefs when that is part of the work, so people who do not want to address spirituality may prefer a different clinician. Vanessa has lived through blended family challenges, adoption and foster parenting, and caregiving across generations. Those life experiences shape how she listens and what she offers in sessions.
She describes herself as empathetic and grounded by years of real-world problem solving. Sessions focus on clear goals and practical steps. Conversations include identifying unhelpful thoughts, trying new behavioral experiments, and working through losses.
She helps people build coping tools they can use between sessions. People come to her for help with anxiety, stress, depression, relationship and communication problems, trauma and abuse, addictions, parenting concerns, anger, and self-esteem struggles. Her aim is to help clients feel more at peace with their choices and to reconnect with moments of joy.
How Vanessa’s approaches translate to online care
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and building a respectful connection. The therapist follows the client’s pace and priorities, giving space to talk through what matters most and supporting a person’s own decisions.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) identifies unhelpful thoughts and tests new behaviors. Online sessions can include short homework tasks, thought records, and practical experiments people try between meetings to reduce anxiety and stress.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy helps people name and shift difficult emotions in relationships and personal life. In remote sessions this can mean guided conversations and exercises that help a person notice patterns and try new ways of responding.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will discuss goals, try methods, and adjust the plan based on what helps. This is a collaborative process where the client’s preferences guide which techniques are used.
Online formats offer flexibility for different needs. Video calls let people use visual cues and longer conversation. Phone sessions can fit a quick check-in or work better when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text-based messaging allow more frequent brief check-ins or ongoing written reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent with a busy life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 28 years
- Licensed
- Alabama
- Languages
- English
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