About Andrea
Dr. Andrea Shirley helps people who are feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or unsure where to turn. She welcomes straightforward conversations about stress, anxiety, grief, career pressures, and questions about identity.
Her tone is calm and practical, and she focuses on small, usable steps people can try between sessions. Andrea is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 27 years of experience in California. She centers sessions on each person's story and strengths rather than treating them as a problem to fix.
How Andrea works
That means listening first, then working together to spot patterns and options that fit the person's life. Her approach draws on client-centered work, narrative ideas, solution-focused techniques, and trauma-focused methods when needed. She uses these tools to help people change unhelpful habits, reframe painful memories, and build coping strategies for sleep, anger, and stress.
Sessions are conversational and goal oriented, not lecture style. She also supports people facing challenges like caregiving strain, chronic illness, adoption and foster care issues, body image concerns, and challenges tied to aging. Andrea pays attention to how past losses or attachment wounds shape current reactions and relationships.
People who value a respectful, collaborative therapist find her style useful. Her work emphasizes practical steps, clearer thinking about difficult situations, and ways to practice new behaviors between appointments. She helps clients move toward steadier days and clearer decisions.
Andrea lists 4 ways of working on the entry:
What Andrea works with
The areas below are the ones Andrea selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LMFT |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 27 |
| 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
How her approaches translate to online therapy
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and reflecting what matters to a person. Online sessions use that same attention to help clients clarify goals and decide the next steps that feel doable. Narrative Therapy helps people retell their experiences so painful events take up less space in daily life; it can be useful for issues like identity, attachment wounds, and past losses. Solution-Focused Therapy looks for small, practical changes that move someone toward their goals and is useful for stress, career decisions, and improving sleep.Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will collaborate with each person to choose which methods to emphasize based on their goals, comfort level, and what they want to change. That collaborative process can shift over time as needs and priorities evolve.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video works well for in-depth conversations and visual cues. Phone sessions can fit into a commute or a short break and need less bandwidth. Live chat and text messaging offer shorter check-ins or paced exchanges between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy lives and try different ways of connecting while working toward clearer thinking and steadier routines.
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Common questions
What kinds of concerns does she address?
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How much clinical experience does she have?
What credentials and location are listed?
Which languages are supported and are international clients accepted?
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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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