About Vanessa
Vanessa Martz brings 28 years of counseling experience to her practice in Alabama. She is an LPC - Licensed Professional Counselor - who combines life experience with a practical therapy style. Her approach is direct and caring, and she speaks plainly with people who are facing hard moments.
Vanessa draws on a long, varied career that includes science, military service, and higher education. She has personal experience with loss, grief, and the challenges that follow trauma.
How Vanessa works
Those experiences shape how she listens and how she helps people find footing after difficult events. In sessions she often uses cognitive behavioral techniques to identify patterns of thinking and behavior that cause pain. She also uses grief work and emotion-focused work to help people process loss and rebuild a sense of purpose.
Mindfulness and solution-focused strategies are part of her toolbox when clients want practical steps and short-term progress. Vanessa describes a warm, sometimes motherly presence paired with a willingness to challenge spiritual beliefs when that is part of the work. She is a licensed pastor and integrates spiritual conversations for people who want that element included.
She asks people up front if they prefer not to discuss spirituality so she can make a better match when needed. Her goal is to help people feel more at peace with the choices they make and to rediscover joy in daily life. Sessions are intended to be collaborative, straightforward, and focused on tangible change and growth.
Vanessa lists 6 ways of working on the entry:
What Vanessa works with
The areas below are the ones Vanessa selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 28 |
| 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
Therapeutic approaches for online care
Vanessa commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Emotionally-Focused Therapy in her online work. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps people notice and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, which can reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) focuses on identifying and understanding emotional patterns and attachment needs, which can be useful when people struggle with relationship and attachment issues.Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. Vanessa will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t worked before. Together they decide which methods to try first and adjust the plan as progress is made.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to accommodate different schedules and needs. Video calls let people use visual cues during deeper conversations, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat is good for shorter check-ins, and text messaging suits ongoing, brief support between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and to keep momentum between meetings.
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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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