About Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn Downing is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) based in Alabama. She brings 41 years of experience and a steady, practical approach to helping people facing stress, anxiety, depression, addictions, grief, and life transitions. She focuses on the person rather than labels.
Sessions are aimed at helping people learn skills, make decisions, and regain a sense of control. Gwendolyn often addresses relationship and family pressures, parenting strain, intimacy concerns, and career stress alongside mood and trauma-related issues.
How Gwendolyn works
Her work draws from several evidence-based methods. She uses attachment-based ideas to look at relationship patterns and Emotionally-Focused Therapy to address emotional needs in those patterns. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, while Dialectical Behavior Therapy offers skills for regulating intense emotions.
She also uses EMDR for processing trauma when appropriate. Gwendolyn has worked in both public agency settings and independent practice. That background means she is familiar with referrals from employee assistance programs and court-related contexts, and she has supported people coming in on their own to handle everyday and complex problems.
Her style is collaborative and practical. She helps people set realistic goals and build on strengths. Getting started involves a brief matching process and scheduling that fits the client's needs.
Gwendolyn lists 10 ways of working on the entry:
What Gwendolyn works with
The areas below are the ones Gwendolyn 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
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Traumatic brain injury
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 41 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Alabama |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches and online therapy options
Attachment-based work looks at how early relationship patterns shape current connections and helps people understand how those patterns affect trust and closeness. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors to reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) teaches concrete skills for managing intense emotions, improving relationships, and reducing self-destructive reactions.Choosing the right approach is part of therapy. The therapist will work together with each person to decide which methods fit best based on goals, concerns, and personal preferences. That shared decision making guides how sessions proceed and which skills are emphasized.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to connect. Video calls allow face-to-face interaction for in-depth work, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to be on camera, and live chat or text-based messaging can support quick check-ins and short exchanges between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to continue care when travel or life demands change.
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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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