About Patricia
Patricia Sumlin is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 25 years of practice. She helps people who feel overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship strain, ADHD-related challenges, and life transitions. Her manner is direct, respectful, and no-nonsense, aimed at giving clear tools rather than vague reassurance.
Patricia draws from several practical approaches to tailor sessions to each person. She uses cognitive-behavioral techniques to clarify unhelpful thinking and build new habits.
Background and approach
She also incorporates acceptance and commitment ideas to help clients focus on valued goals and tolerate difficult feelings. Her background includes work in community clinics, residential programs, and hospice settings. She has experience with substance use treatment, trauma-informed care in remote Alaska communities, prison re-entry programs, and outpatient DBT groups.
This variety shaped a pragmatic, skills-focused style that still honors personal history and cultural context. In sessions she balances listening with direct feedback. Clients can expect skill practice, clear suggestions, and attention to real-life problems like sleep, parenting stress, grief, or workplace issues.
She also addresses identity and sexual orientation matters for LGBTQIA clients and neurodiversity topics such as ADD and dyslexia. Patricia holds a licensed marriage and family therapist credential in California and Washington. She offers help through several online formats and aims to form a collaborative plan that fits each person’s life and goals.
Practical approaches for online therapy and skill building
Patricia often uses cognitive behavioral therapy, which looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and behavior and teaches concrete steps to change unhelpful patterns. CBT can help with anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and habits connected to attention concerns.She also draws on acceptance and commitment therapy, which helps people clarify what matters to them and take small actions toward those values while learning to sit with difficult feelings. ACT is useful when someone is stuck in avoidance or struggling to make life changes.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. She will collaborate with each person to choose techniques that match their goals, needs, and preferences, and adjust the plan as progress is made. Clients can expect a mix of discussion, skill practice, and homework between sessions.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy flexible. Video calls allow face-to-face interaction for deeper conversation, phone sessions can be easier when lower bandwidth is needed, and messaging or live chat can be used for brief check-ins or skill coaching between meetings. These options help fit therapy into busy schedules and varying daily demands.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- 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 of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hearing impaired
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- 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
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- California, Washington
- Languages
- English
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