About Maria
Maria Caruso is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with 20 years of clinical experience. She practices in New Jersey and focuses on guiding people through major life changes, grief, relationship struggles, and ongoing stress. Her approach is practical and collaborative, with clear goals set together at the start of work.
Maria uses a mix of well-established approaches to match each person's needs. She draws on Client-Centered Therapy to build trust and safety, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to address unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns, and Narrative Therapy to help people reframe painful experiences.
How Maria works
Psychodynamic ideas and Solution-Focused strategies also inform her work when they fit a client's goals. Sessions often include concrete tools such as journaling, structured agreements, and creative exercises. These techniques help reveal patterns that might be hard to talk about and give practical ways to change them.
Clients leave with steps they can try between sessions. Maria has experience supporting people coping with grief, caregiving stress, chronic illness, addiction, parenting challenges, intimacy concerns, and career transitions. She has also worked alongside people dealing with end-of-life issues and serious medical conditions.
Her style is straightforward and empathetic. She treats therapy as a partnership where both people do the work required to meet the goals. The focus is on useful change and on helping clients find meaning and resilience in difficult times.
Maria lists 5 ways of working on the entry:
What Maria works with
The areas below are the ones Maria selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Grief
Also listed
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Training and background
| Register | LPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 20 |
| 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
How Maria’s Approaches Translate to Online Therapy
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and building a supportive relationship. Online sessions use that same attentive stance to help people feel heard and to set goals together. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches concrete skills to shift them; it adapts well to worksheets, between-session practice, and guided exercises over video or messaging.Choosing an approach is a team effort. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t worked before. Together they decide whether to emphasize CBT skills, narrative work, or relationship-focused listening, and they adjust the plan as progress is made.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for interactive work and skill practice. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or when a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging make it simpler to fit therapy into a busy day and to send journal entries or reflections between sessions. These options give flexibility while keeping the focus on practical steps and steady 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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