About Claire
Claire McDonough is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 21 years of experience helping people manage anxiety, depression, stress, and life transitions. She practices with a straightforward, respectful style and focuses on building trust early in the work. Claire listens carefully and offers direct, practical guidance to help people meet their goals.
Claire earned a master’s degree in social work and a bachelor’s degree in the same field, and she holds the New Jersey LCSW credential.
How Claire works
Her background includes two decades in a range of mental health settings, where she has supported people facing mood conditions, attention challenges, trauma, and substance concerns. She uses methods drawn from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy alongside emotionally focused and mindfulness approaches.
Sessions often include learning new coping skills, trying different ways to respond to hard feelings, and practicing communication techniques. Claire also uses motivational interviewing to help people consider change and set realistic steps forward. Her focus areas include relationship and intimacy concerns, family and parenting stress, grief and loss, compassion fatigue, and identity-related issues such as gender dysphoria and LGBT concerns.
She also addresses attachment patterns, caregiver strain, and problems that come from past family dynamics. In short sessions or longer work, Claire aims to balance support with gentle challenges. She helps people identify practical next steps, test new behaviors, and build routines that reduce distress.
Her approach is collaborative and goal-focused.
Claire lists 7 ways of working on the entry:
What Claire works with
The areas below are the ones Claire selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LCSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 21 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | New Jersey |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Applying clinical approaches to online care
Claire often uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice unhelpful thinking and test new ways of responding. CBT sessions focus on practical skills, such as breaking problems into steps, changing unhelpful thoughts, and trying small behavior changes to see what helps.She also draws on Dialectical Behavior Therapy for emotion regulation and coping skills. DBT offers straightforward strategies for managing intense feelings, improving distress tolerance, and strengthening communication when relationships become strained.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Claire will collaborate with each person to choose methods that match their goals and daily life. She listens to preferences and adjusts tools over time so therapy feels relevant and doable.
Online therapy offers flexibility with multiple ways to connect: video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is useful for more in-depth sessions and visual cues. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or when a shorter check-in fits a break at work. Messaging and live chat let people share updates between sessions and use brief written check-ins when that format is helpful. Together, these options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule and to keep consistent momentum.
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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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