Marcia Howard

Marcia Howard is a licensed clinical social worker with two decades of experience supporting people through life’s hardest moments. She focuses on practical strategies that help reduce stress, manage anxiety, and address mood concerns. Marcia speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese and works from California as an LCSW. She uses hands-on approaches that break big problems into small steps. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people notice patterns of thinking that keep them stuck and try different responses. Dialectical Behavior Therapy offers skills for emotion regulation and handling intense feelings. Mindfulness practices and solution-focused conversations are woven in to build coping skills and short-term goals. Marcia has extensive experience helping people after trauma and abuse, and with relationship and family problems. She also supports those facing life transitions like divorce, career change, or the challenges that come with aging. Hospice and end-of-life counseling are listed among her focus areas for clients navigating serious illness and loss. Her style is collaborative and straightforward. She aims to identify what’s most urgent and practical first, then build longer-term coping tools. Sessions tend to include skill teaching, simple behavioral experiments, and concrete problem solving. Starting therapy with Marcia involves naming immediate concerns and setting small, realistic goals. She encourages gentle pacing and regular check-ins so progress can be measured and adjusted over time.

How therapy approaches translate to online care

Marcia draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to guide her work. CBT helps people spot unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviors, which is useful for anxiety, depression, and stress. DBT focuses on emotion regulation and coping skills for intense feelings and relationship challenges, giving concrete tools to use between sessions.

Finding the best approach is a team effort. Marcia will talk with each person about goals, try methods that fit those goals, and adjust the plan based on what helps most. The therapist emphasizes collaboration and checking in on progress so the approach stays aligned with what the person needs.

Session formats are not specified in the original biography, so please confirm current options before booking. Online therapy can make it easier to fit counseling into a busy life by reducing travel time and allowing appointments during work breaks or in quieter parts of the day. It can also support steady follow-up and practice of skills learned in sessions, which helps keep progress moving forward.