About Joan
Joan Holmes is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) based in New Jersey with 25 years of experience. She uses a warm, client-centered approach and listens carefully to understand each person's situation. Joan aims to make it easier to talk about hard things and to find practical next steps.
Her work often focuses on stress, anxiety, grief, depression, trauma and abuse, and parenting challenges. She also supports people facing relationship struggles, career transitions, low self-esteem, anger, and compassion fatigue.
How Joan works
Joan has experience with adoption and foster care concerns, attachment issues, chronic illness, and caregiving stress. Joan blends evidence-based tools such as cognitive behavioral techniques, acceptance and commitment ideas, and dialectical behavior strategies with attachment-based and client-centered practices. She emphasizes strong rapport and patience, so people feel heard before steps toward change are introduced.
Sessions are conversational and grounded in real-life problems. Her background includes work in nonprofit social services, counseling teens in home and group settings, and direct support for families coping with bereavement. Joan has worked with people on the autism spectrum and with clients experiencing severe family dysfunction and suicidal behavior.
That variety informs her flexible approach. Joan helps people identify manageable goals and build skills to cope with life changes. She focuses on respectful, nonjudgmental care and practical steps that fit everyday life.
To begin, Joan recommends a simple matching process to connect people to the right schedule and session format.
Joan lists 9 ways of working on the entry:
What Joan works with
The areas below are the ones Joan selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 25 |
| 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
Approaches that guide online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people clarify what matters most and take small actions toward those values even when feelings are hard. It is useful for anxiety, stress, and major life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing them with new behaviors to reduce symptoms like worry and low mood. It works well for depression, anxiety, and coping with life challenges. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationships influence current patterns and helps people build safer, more trusting connections in their lives.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Joan will collaborate with each person to choose methods that match their goals and day-to-day needs. She listens first, suggests options, and adjusts the plan as progress is made so the therapy fits the person rather than forcing a single method.
Online therapy with Joan is offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video allows face-to-face conversation for deeper processing. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and messaging let people share thoughts between sessions or check in during busy days. These options help people fit counseling into school, work, or caregiving schedules while keeping the focus on practical steps and skill building.
Start online instead of waiting
Our partner service asks a few questions about what you are looking for and matches you with a therapist for sessions from home.
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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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