About Carla
Carla Bensie is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) practicing in West Virginia with 11 years of experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, addiction concerns, trauma and depression. Carla aims to make the first step toward change feel manageable and supported.
Carla creates a calm, nonjudgmental space where people can talk through difficult feelings. She pays attention to what each person says and tailors sessions to their needs.
How Carla works
She emphasizes practical tools people can use between sessions. Her work often addresses relationship and intimacy-related struggles, body image and self-esteem, and mood conditions such as bipolar disorder. She also supports people facing complex issues like grief, hospice and end-of-life questions, and the effects of past abuse.
Carla uses several approaches to guide therapy, including cognitive behavioral techniques to shift unhelpful thoughts and actions, mindfulness practices to reduce reactivity, and trauma-focused methods for processing painful memories. She matches methods to what each person finds useful. Sessions may include short skills practice, problem-solving, and paced discussion of difficult topics.
Carla works with people on concrete goals like coping with life changes, managing cravings, lowering panic, and improving communication patterns. She offers services in English and accepts clients across regions, working with different schedules and formats. The focus is on steady, attainable progress and on building skills that make daily life easier.
Carla lists 6 ways of working on the entry:
What Carla works with
The areas below are the ones Carla selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family of origin issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Multicultural concerns
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
Training and background
| Register | LPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 11 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | West Virginia |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Evidence-based approaches for online care
Carla uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help people identify and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. CBT often involves setting small goals, tracking patterns, and practicing new responses to reduce anxiety or low mood.She also draws on trauma-focused methods and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing to address painful memories and their ongoing effects. These approaches work by helping the mind process distressing experiences at a manageable pace.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals and preferences, then adjust techniques over time. Clients often try a mix of skills training, mindfulness practice, and targeted trauma work to see what helps most.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit different schedules. Video allows face-to-face conversation and screen sharing for worksheets, while phone sessions use less bandwidth and can be easier during brief breaks. Live chat or text messaging can be useful for quick check-ins, short exercises, or ongoing support between full sessions. These options make it easier to work on stress, anxiety, addiction recovery, and trauma without rearranging a full day.
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Common questions
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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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