Luciana Smalls

Luciana Smalls is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in South Carolina with nine years of clinical experience. She draws on a long career in human services to help people facing depression, anxiety, grief, addiction, and major life transitions. Her approach is warm and direct, aiming to help clients build skills they can use between sessions.

She blends practical tools with a person-centered attitude. Sessions often use strategies from cognitive behavioral methods to spot unhelpful thinking and to try new behaviors. Mindfulness techniques and parts of dialectical behavior approaches appear when clients need ways to manage strong emotions and stay steady in the moment.

Luciana also works with relationship and parenting concerns, adoption and foster care issues, blended family dynamics, and caregiver stress. She supports people dealing with intimacy and communication problems, as well as those coping with hospice and end-of-life counseling matters. Her focus includes ADHD, impulse control, and challenges tied to intellectual disability.

In therapy she uses motivational interviewing and narrative ideas to help people clarify goals and find motivation for change. Clients co-create a treatment plan that addresses their specific goals and real-life obstacles. Sessions are practical and skill-focused, with an emphasis on small steps that add up.

Her style balances encouragement with gentle challenge. She aims to respect cultural and identity differences and to treat each person as an individual. To begin, Luciana asks clients to share current concerns so she can tailor an approach that fits their needs.

How therapy approaches guide online work

Client-centered therapy focuses on the client's own goals and perspective, with the therapist listening closely and reflecting what matters most. This approach helps people feel heard and helps shape a plan that fits their life. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches practical exercises to change patterns that cause distress. CBT can be useful for anxiety, depression, and coping with life changes. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, adds skill-building for managing intense emotions and improving interpersonal effectiveness, and can help with impulsivity, anger, and emotional overwhelm.

Finding the best approach is part of the work together. The therapist will collaborate with each person to decide which methods match their goals, needs, and preferences. Methods can be blended and adjusted as progress is made so the plan stays useful and realistic.

Session formats are not specified in the provided biography, so confirm current session options before booking. Many people find online therapy helps fit sessions into a busy life by saving commute time, allowing shorter check-ins around work, or making it easier to meet when travel is difficult. Licensed professionals can use exercises, homework, and mindfulness practices that are easy to continue between meetings, which helps keep progress moving forward.