About Joanna
Joanna Sanchez offers support to people feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief, addiction, or major life changes. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and brings 15 years of experience helping individuals navigate emotional and relational challenges. Her approach is direct and compassionate, aimed at giving each person practical ways to move forward.
Joanna uses conversation to uncover patterns that keep people stuck. She listens closely and asks questions that help clarify what matters most.
Background and approach
Sessions are collaborative and paced to match each person's readiness for change. Her background includes outpatient therapy, residential treatment, and leadership roles in mental health and substance use care. That range gives her experience with both day-to-day struggles and more complex recovery needs.
Joanna blends relational and psychodynamic perspectives with trauma-informed practices to address root causes as well as current symptoms. She also draws on narrative techniques and cognitive-behavioral strategies when those fit the client's goals. This mix helps people work through attachment wounds, abandonment, communication problems, and post-traumatic stress.
Joanna pays attention to themes like guilt, shame, loneliness, and life purpose while supporting practical steps toward healing. Sessions may focus on rebuilding self-trust, improving relationships, or managing compulsive sexual behavior and other addictions. Joanna aims to create an affirming space for LGBT clients and for people processing divorce, loss, or the stress of caregiving.
Her work centers on listening deeply and helping people find their next right steps.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Joanna works from relational and psychodynamic viewpoints, focusing on how early relationships shape current patterns. These approaches help when people want to understand why they repeat certain behaviors or feel stuck in old responses. They are useful for addressing attachment wounds, abandonment fears, and longstanding relationship themes.She also integrates trauma-informed practices that center safety and pacing when working with painful memories or post-traumatic stress. Trauma-informed care helps people process traumatic experiences at a pace that feels manageable and reduces re-triggering during sessions.
Narrower techniques such as narrative work and cognitive-behavioral strategies are used when they fit a person’s goals. Narrative techniques help reframe life stories and reduce shame, while cognitive-behavioral ideas offer concrete tools for managing anxiety, cravings, or depressive thinking.
Choosing the right mix of approaches is a shared process. The therapist will discuss options, try approaches collaboratively, and adjust based on progress and preferences. Clients are invited to give feedback so the work stays relevant to their goals.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video works well for deep conversation and visual connection. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or for brief check-ins. Live chat and text messaging are useful for ongoing support between sessions, quick emotional check-ins, and flexible scheduling. These options make therapy more adaptable to busy lives and changing needs.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- Alaska
- Languages
- English, Spanish