About Sheila
Sheila Askins is a licensed clinician with both an MD and a LCSW-C and 28 years in the helping professions. She focuses on practical steps that help people manage stress, anxiety, addiction, depression, and ADHD. Her style is direct and person-focused, aimed at making day-to-day life clearer and more manageable for parents and adults.
She began in social services supporting families and children. Early work combined case management and counseling to stabilize home situations and connect people with needed resources.
Background and approach
Over time she expanded into roles as a mental health specialist and school counselor, helping people manage barriers to employment and education. Her practice often addresses substance use and drug and alcohol addiction alongside other concerns. She uses straightforward methods to help people reduce symptoms and improve functioning.
Sessions commonly include skill-building and concrete problem-solving rather than long, abstract discussion. Sheila draws on client-centered work to follow each person’s priorities, and on cognitive behavioral techniques to change unhelpful thinking and behavior. She also uses solution-focused methods to set short-term goals and measure progress.
Together these approaches aim to make therapy useful from the first weeks. People who prefer clear steps, practical homework, and a focus on current problems may find her approach helpful. She works from Maryland and offers services in English.
Approaches that fit your life and schedule
Sheila uses client-centered methods to follow each person’s priorities and pace. This means sessions begin with what matters most to the client and adapt to their goals and daily constraints.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. It introduces concrete skills and small homework tasks that can reduce anxiety, depression, and ADHD-related challenges over weeks to months.
Solution-Focused Therapy targets short-term progress by setting clear, attainable goals. It helps people identify what’s already working and build on those small successes to see real change quickly.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss options, try techniques, and adjust based on what works for the client’s needs and preferences. Goals and methods are revisited as progress is made.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit different rhythms of life. Video is useful for a full session with visual cues, phone works when bandwidth is limited, live chat or text can be a shorter check-in or fit into a work break. These options make it easier to keep up with therapy while managing family, work, or school commitments.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Coping with life changes
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- Parenting issues
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 28 years
- Licensed
- Maryland
- Languages
- English
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