Paula Donovan

Paula Donovan is a licensed clinical social worker with 20 years of experience. She brings a warm, conversational style and a practical focus to conversations about grief, stress, relationships, and life transitions.

Paula believes people are the experts on their own lives. She listens first, then helps identify strengths and patterns that can be strengthened. Sessions often include straightforward reflection, skill-building, and planning for small, doable changes.

Her work covers a wide range of concerns including anxiety, depression, addictions, trauma, and issues around intimacy and self-esteem. She also supports people facing aging and geriatric questions, caregiver stress, and hospice and end-of-life counseling. Paula draws on multiple approaches to tailor each session to what the person needs in the moment.

Paula mixes client-centered conversation with practical tools from cognitive behavioral therapy and skills from dialectical behavior therapy. Mindfulness and motivational interviewing also inform her approach when helping people manage difficult feelings or make life changes.

She aims to build a trustworthy, often gently humorous connection so people can speak honestly about pain and hope. Her background includes years living and working internationally as well as long experience in the United States, which shapes a down-to-earth, culturally aware way of working.

How therapeutic approaches guide online work

Client-centered therapy focuses on the person in the room, offering empathetic listening and helping people discover their own answers. It suits grief, relationship trouble, and times when someone needs space to talk through what matters most.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect. It offers clear tools to shift unhelpful thinking and reduce symptoms of anxiety or depression through practice and small behavior changes.

Dialectical behavior therapy, DBT, teaches skills for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and better communication. It can help when strong emotions, relationship conflicts, or impulsive behaviors make life feel chaotic.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate to pick methods that match a person's goals, needs, and preferences. That may mean trying different techniques and adjusting over time to see what helps most.

Please confirm available session options before booking, since formats are not specified in the profile. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy week, allow shorter check-ins when needed, and reduce travel time so therapy can be a regular part of daily life.