About Colleen
Colleen Mest is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who helps people manage stress, anxiety, trauma, and depression. She supports those coping with relationship strain, parenting challenges, grief, and workplace stress. Colleen focuses on practical steps people can take now to feel steadier and more capable.
She uses a collaborative style. Sessions aim to identify strengths and build small, doable changes. Colleen listens closely and works with clients to set realistic goals.
How Colleen works
She emphasizes clear communication and steady progress rather than quick fixes. Her background includes 12 years of experience in assessment and mental health treatment in Pennsylvania. That work brought a lot of experience with trauma, self-esteem concerns, and mood challenges.
She also helps people navigate attachment issues, caregiver stress, codependency, and family of origin concerns. Colleen draws on several practical approaches. She uses client-centered work to follow what matters most to the person sitting across from her.
Cognitive behavioral techniques help people change unhelpful thinking and behavior. Mindfulness and solution-focused strategies add ways to manage symptoms and set realistic next steps. People seeking help for postpartum depression, fertility-related stress, seasonal affective disorder, or questions about life purpose will find a session style that looks at daily routines and coping tools.
Colleen aims to make therapy understandable and usable in everyday life.
Colleen lists 6 ways of working on the entry:
What Colleen works with
The areas below are the ones Colleen selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
Also listed
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Fertility issues
- Grief
- Life purpose
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LCSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 12 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Pennsylvania |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Practical therapy approaches for online care
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and following the person's lead. The therapist creates space for people to say what matters most, and sessions center on personal goals and strengths. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts and actions affect mood and behavior. It teaches specific strategies for managing anxiety, depression, and unhelpful thinking patterns.Finding the right approach happens with conversation and trial. The therapist will work collaboratively to match methods to the client's needs, goals, and preferences. That may mean using more CBT tools for symptom management, or shifting to mindfulness and solution-focused techniques for immediate coping and goal-setting.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to connect. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation when seeing expressions matters. Phone sessions are useful when bandwidth is limited or a quieter setting is preferred. Live chat and text-based messaging provide brief check-ins, written reflections, or a shorter way to touch base between longer sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy schedules and different life rhythms.
Start online instead of waiting
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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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