About Akia
Akia Izzard welcomes people who feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to move forward. She explains things plainly and meets each person where they are. Akia is a licensed clinical social worker - LCSW - based in Pennsylvania with 24 years of experience in behavioral health.
She helps people manage stress and anxiety and works on relationship concerns and self-esteem. She also supports those coping with depression or major life changes.
Background and approach
Conversations are straightforward and focused on practical steps clients can try between sessions. Akia uses several approaches to tailor care to each person. She draws on cognitive behavioral techniques to identify unhelpful thinking patterns.
Dialectical skills help with emotional regulation and staying present during difficult moments. Motivational interviewing can help when someone feels stuck or unsure about change. Sessions aim to be collaborative.
Akia listens, offers feedback, and helps people set small goals. She also works on communication skills, forgiveness, grief and end-of-life concerns, caregiver stress, and relationship complexities such as infidelity or non-monogamous arrangements. Her practice supports adults navigating aging and geriatric issues, postpartum depression, isolation, and questions about life purpose.
Conversations are direct, respectful, and paced to each person’s needs. The focus is on clearer thinking, steadier emotions, and better daily coping.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Akia commonly uses cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy in online work. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on spotting and changing thought patterns that lead to distress and then testing new ways of thinking and behaving. It is useful for anxiety, depression, and stress management. Dialectical behavior therapy teaches concrete skills for managing strong emotions, improving distress tolerance, and practicing better interpersonal effectiveness.She also draws on motivational interviewing to help people find their own reasons to change. That approach emphasizes listening, gentle questioning, and building motivation rather than pushing a fixed plan. Deciding which blend of methods to use is a team effort between the therapist and the person in care, based on goals and what feels most helpful.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, which makes it easier to fit therapy into a busy life. Video allows face-to-face discussion and screen-sharing for worksheets, phone sessions can be useful when bandwidth is limited, live chat suits shorter check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between meetings. These options give flexibility while keeping the work focused on practical skills and steady progress.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also works with
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 24 years
- Licensed
- Pennsylvania
- Languages
- English