About Clare
Clare O'Toole offers a calm, steady presence for people facing stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship struggles. She approaches each person with warmth and curiosity. Her style is collaborative and nonjudgmental, focused on what matters to the client right now and next steps that feel realistic and doable.
Clare is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT, practicing in California with twenty years of experience. She blends practical skill-building with attention to emotions and attachment patterns.
How Clare works
Sessions look at thoughts, behaviors, and how relationships shape current problems. Clare helps people untangle patterns around control, commitment, impulsivity, and communication problems. She draws on approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Attachment-Based Therapy, and client-centered methods.
This mix lets her tailor work to issues like trauma and abuse, compassion fatigue, ADHD, and caregiver stress. Clients can expect concrete tools alongside room to process painful feelings. Clare often supports people dealing with life transitions, divorce and separation, career uncertainty, or feelings of emptiness and isolation.
She also addresses forgiveness, guilt and shame, infidelity, jealousy, and family problems in individual sessions. The aim is to help people find steadier ground and clearer choices. Work begins with figuring out goals and what the client needs most.
Clare uses gentle challenge and practical exercises to build coping skills and strengthen connections. She offers video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to fit different schedules and preferences.
Clare lists 12 ways of working on the entry:
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
What Clare works with
The areas below are the ones Clare selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LMFT |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 20 |
| 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 Clare's approaches translate to online work
Clare uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people identify unhelpful thinking and try different behaviors; this approach is practical and often focuses on skills and homework between sessions. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps clients notice difficult feelings without getting stuck and clarify values to guide action, which can be useful for anxiety, stress, and life changes. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationship patterns affect current connections and communication, helping people shift how they relate to others and to themselves.Finding the right approach is part of therapy. Clare works collaboratively to match methods to each person's goals, needs, and preferences. She may combine skills training with attachment work or client-centered listening depending on what helps most in the moment.
Online therapy offers flexibility and makes it easier to fit sessions into busy lives. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and nonverbal cues, phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or for short check-ins, and live chat or text messaging can support ongoing check-ins or people who prefer not to be on camera. These options let people keep continuity of care during transitions, work around schedules, and pick the format that best supports their progress.
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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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