About Claudia
Claudia Smith is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 40 years of professional experience in California. She focuses on helping people facing stress, anxiety, depression, and problems with addiction. Claudia emphasizes practical steps and steady support so people can take small, doable steps toward better days.
She believes each person knows their own story and brings strengths into the room. Sessions aim to build on those strengths while addressing low self-esteem, motivation, and confidence.
Background and approach
Claudia focuses on making changes feel manageable instead of overwhelming. Her work also covers attention difficulties such as ADHD, grief, bipolar mood concerns, and life transitions like divorce or blended family challenges. She pays attention to attachment and family-of-origin issues when those patterns affect daily life.
Practical coaching around life purpose and role changes is part of her approach. Claudia uses collaborative methods that help people identify what works for them. She draws on client-centered listening, skills from dialectical behavior approaches, mindful practices, and short-term solution-focused work.
These methods are mixed to match a person’s goals and rhythm. People who prefer clear steps, grounded listening, and steady encouragement often find this style helpful. Claudia offers sessions by video, phone, live chat, and text-based messaging to fit different schedules.
She supports people who want to make realistic changes and keep moving forward.
Approaches and Online Support for Real-Life Change
Claudia draws on client-centered work that puts the person’s experience first. This approach means sessions focus on listening, reflecting back what matters, and helping the client choose next steps that feel right for them. It is helpful for people who need time to tell their story and set personal goals.She also uses Dialectical Behavior Therapy ideas to teach practical skills for managing strong emotions and impulsive urges. These skills can help with anxiety, addiction-related urges, and mood shifts by giving short, repeatable tools to use day to day. Mindfulness-based techniques are woven into sessions to help people slow down, notice patterns, and reduce stress through focused attention and simple exercises.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to decide which methods to try first and will adjust based on what feels useful. Goals, preferences, and life demands guide each plan.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to match different routines. Video is useful for in-depth conversation and visual cues, phone sessions fit tighter schedules or lower bandwidth, live chat is good for brief check-ins, and text messaging supports ongoing reminders and short reflections. These options help make therapy more flexible and easier to fit into daily life.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Fatherhood issues
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Impulsivity
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Traumatic brain injury
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 40 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English