About Paula
Paula Donovan is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with 20 years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, grief, relationship problems, and mood concerns. She speaks English and practices in Virginia. Paula centers the conversation on the person's own knowledge of their life and priorities.
Paula draws on client-centered therapy to build a trusting, respectful working relationship. She also uses cognitive behavioral methods to spot unhelpful thinking patterns and DBT skills to manage strong emotions.
How Paula works
Mindfulness and motivational interviewing are woven in when they fit a person's goals. Her approach is plainspoken and practical. Sessions focus on identifying strengths, clarifying values, and practicing small changes that add up.
She helps people restore energy after loss, cope with chronic stress, or untangle relationship patterns that cause pain. Paula has a long career that includes international life experience before training as a clinical therapist in the United States. That background informs her work with multicultural concerns and complex situations like caregiving, aging, and end-of-life stress.
Therapy with Paula often includes short skills practice, problem-focused discussion, and attention to emotional recovery. She aims to make the work manageable and relevant to everyday life. Paula values honesty, warmth, and sometimes a bit of laughter as part of healing.
Paula lists 9 ways of working on the entry:
What Paula works with
The areas below are the ones Paula selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also listed
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Fertility issues
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Training and background
| Register | LCSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 20 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Virginia |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Using practical approaches in online therapy
Paula combines client-centered therapy with cognitive behavioral techniques to make online work feel grounded and useful. Client-centered therapy focuses on listening, respect, and collaboration so the person feels heard and understood. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions and helps people try new ways of responding to anxiety, low mood, or stressful situations.She also draws on dialectical behavior therapy skills for emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness when needed. DBT skills are practical tools for managing strong emotions, improving communication, and reducing reactive behavior. Together these approaches aim to build skills while keeping the person’s goals front and center.
Finding the right mix happens together. Paula will ask about the issues that matter most, what has helped before, and what feels doable now. From there she and the client choose techniques and set small, concrete steps to practice between sessions.
Online formats offer flexibility for busy lives. Video calls let people work face-to-face from a chosen location, phone sessions need less bandwidth, live chat supports brief check-ins, and text messaging allows ongoing reflections between meetings. These options help fit therapy into work, caregiving, or other daily demands while keeping the focus on progress and practical tools.
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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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