About Maria
Maria Rivera is a licensed clinical social worker in North Carolina with 15 years of experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and ADHD while also addressing addiction and trauma. Maria centers sessions on each person's strengths and goals so clients feel heard and guided.
Maria uses straightforward, practical methods to help people handle difficult moments. She draws on cognitive behavioral techniques to identify unhelpful thought patterns and build new habits.
Background and approach
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ideas help clients clarify values and take small, doable steps toward what matters to them. Her style is warm and collaborative. Sessions are conversational and goal-focused, with space to process emotions and practice new skills.
She often combines short-term problem solving with deeper work on self-esteem, grief, or relationship patterns. Maria also supports people facing life transitions, chronic health challenges, caregiving stress, and issues around attachment or adoption. She adapts tools to fit everyday life so change feels manageable rather than overwhelming.
Clients can expect clear options and practical exercises to try between sessions. Maria emphasizes taking gradual steps and celebrating progress along the way. If someone is looking for calm, steady support while tackling anxiety, ADHD-related struggles, or recovery from difficult experiences, she offers approachable guidance and experience to help them move forward.
Evidence-informed approaches for online support
Maria combines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people manage troubling thoughts and build meaningful routines. ACT focuses on clarifying values and taking committed action toward them, which can help when life feels scattered or overwhelming. CBT looks at patterns of thinking and behavior to create practical steps that reduce anxiety and improve daily functioning.She sees choosing an approach as a collaborative process. The therapist will talk through goals and preferences, try techniques in session, and adjust methods based on what helps most. Clients work together with her to find a blend of strategies that fits their life and needs.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make care more flexible. Video calls let people use visual cues and practice skills in-session. Phone sessions can require less bandwidth and are useful for shorter check-ins. Chat and messaging allow brief check-ins, written exercises, or ongoing support between appointments. These options help people fit therapy into busy schedules and maintain continuity of care.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- North Carolina
- Languages
- English
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