About Amy
Amy Shafer is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 30 years of clinical experience in California. She uses practical, evidence-informed approaches to help people manage stress, grief, anxiety, and life transitions. Amy keeps language plain and focuses on clear steps people can try between sessions.
Her main approaches include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Client-Centered work. She blends these to address mood concerns, relationship strain, parenting stress, addiction-related worries, and trauma or abuse reactions.
How Amy works
Sessions often focus on skill-building, values-based decisions, and improving everyday routines like sleep and self-care. Amy has a long history of clinical work across many settings. Her background includes degrees in psychology and social work, and a career that spans both adult and geriatric concerns.
That experience informs a practical style that aims to match interventions to what each person needs right now. In the therapy room she listens first, then helps people set small, achievable goals. She offers tools for coping with loss, managing difficult feelings, and improving communication.
Over time she supports people to notice what works and adjust strategies as life changes. People who choose Amy can expect straightforward guidance, respectful conversation, and help breaking problems into manageable steps. She invites clients to bring specific issues like chronic pain, family of origin concerns, or compassion fatigue and work from there.
Amy lists 6 ways of working on the entry:
What Amy works with
The areas below are the ones Amy selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Training and background
| Register | LCSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 30 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | California |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches that translate well to online sessions
Amy commonly draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in her work. ACT focuses on helping people clarify their values and take small steps toward them while learning to live with difficult thoughts and feelings. It is useful for anxiety, grief, and major life changes. CBT looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions and gives concrete tools to change unhelpful patterns, which can help with depression, sleeping problems, and stress.She also uses Client-Centered Therapy to keep the work grounded in each person's experience. That approach emphasizes listening, empathy, and working at the client's pace. Together she and the client decide which mix of approaches fits best based on goals, preferences, and the issues brought to sessions.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility for these methods. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and skill practice. Phone sessions work when bandwidth is limited or a simpler check-in is needed. Live chat or text messaging can support brief reflections, homework reminders, or quick coping prompts between sessions. These options make it easier to keep momentum and fit therapy into a busy life.
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Common questions
What kinds of problems does she help address?
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How much clinical experience does she have?
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What is the first step to begin working together?
A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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