About Charlene
Charlene Sims is a licensed marriage and family therapist with eight years of experience helping people through worry, low mood, and life transitions. She offers calm, practical support for stress, anxiety, anger, depression, ADHD, and concerns around identity and relationships. Charlene speaks in straightforward language and aims to make the first steps less overwhelming for people who are nervous about starting therapy.
She centers sessions on each person's priorities and strengths.
Background and approach
Clients lead the story and she helps break problems into manageable steps. Sessions often focus on clearer communication, coping skills for anxiety or anger, and small behavior changes that add up over time. Charlene draws on client-centered work and cognitive behavioral ideas to help people notice patterns and try new responses.
She also uses techniques from dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness to build distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and present-moment awareness. Solution-focused tools are used to set concrete goals and track progress week to week. Her background includes work with trauma, grief, and complex relationship concerns, and she pays attention to cultural and identity factors that shape experience.
Charlene practices in California as an LMFT - Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist - and brings a warm, nonjudgmental stance to sessions. Sessions are offered in English and available via video, phone, live chat, or text messaging. She supports people coping with chronic illness, caregiver stress, and questions around life purpose, always aiming for practical steps that fit daily life.
How therapeutic approaches shape online care
Charlene combines client-centered therapy with cognitive behavioral techniques to set usable goals and change unhelpful patterns. Client-centered work means sessions follow the person's priorities and use their strengths as a guide. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps people identify thoughts and behaviors that keep problems active and practice small experiments to test new ways of coping.She also uses elements of dialectical behavior therapy to teach skills for managing intense emotions and improving relationships. That approach emphasizes emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and clear communication tools that can be practiced between sessions. Choosing the right mix of approaches is collaborative - Charlene works with each person to figure out what fits their needs, goals, and preferences and adjusts methods as progress is made.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video sessions allow face-to-face conversation when visual cues help, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat suits shorter check-ins, and text messaging supports ongoing reflections or quick coping reminders. These options make it simpler to fit therapy into busy days and to keep momentum between meetings.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Anger management
- Depression
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Attachment issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Domestic violence
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 8 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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