About Merry
Merry McKinnon is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 33 years of practice in California. She focuses on helping people who struggle with stress, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Merry pays particular attention to clients navigating ADHD and learning differences who are trying to make sense of academic or workplace challenges.
She has worked with people who identify high-functioning Autism Spectrum traits, non-verbal learning disorder, and auditory processing differences.
How Merry works
Many clients come for help with isolation, social anxiety, grief, and motivation problems. Merry often sees how these issues overlap and affect daily routines and relationships. Merry emphasizes a relational approach first.
She builds trust so clients can talk honestly about their strengths and limits. She uses a behavioral-cognitive perspective to help people notice patterns, test new ways of behaving, and change unhelpful thinking. Her sessions aim to be practical and goal-focused.
Merry helps clients break big problems into small steps they can try between sessions. She also supports people in uncovering skills they may have overlooked or stopped using. Merry believes growth can happen at any stage of life and finds it rewarding to help people reclaim energy and purpose.
Her work centers on clear goals, steady progress, and respect for each person’s pace and experience.
What Merry works with
The areas below are the ones Merry selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
Also listed
- ADHD
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Communication problems
- Depression
- Guilt and shame
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LMFT |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 33 |
| 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 evidence-based techniques work online
Merry draws from a behavioral-cognitive perspective that helps people spot unhelpful thinking and test new reactions. This approach is useful for anxiety, depression, low motivation, and many everyday struggles by focusing on practical behavior changes and clear steps to try between sessions.She also works with strategies tailored for neurodiverse concerns such as ADHD and learning differences. These strategies focus on structure, breaking tasks into manageable parts, and building routines that reduce overwhelm and improve follow-through. They can help with organization, workplace or academic challenges, and social anxiety symptoms.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Merry will review your goals, current patterns, and preferences and then suggest techniques to try. Together you can adjust methods over time until the approach fits how you like to work and what you want to achieve.
Online sessions are designed for convenience and flexibility. Video calls suit deeper conversations and visual cues, phone sessions are a good option when bandwidth is limited, live chat can work for brief check-ins, and text messaging lets people share thoughts between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and continue 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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