About Maria
Maria Russo is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) based in Colorado with 25 years of practice. She draws on a long career and personal experience to help people move from surviving to living more fully. Maria speaks plainly and aims to make therapy feel understandable and practical for worried parents and busy adults.
She focuses on everyday struggles like stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and coping with life changes.
Background and approach
She also helps people facing relationship and intimacy challenges, grief, addiction, and family problems. Her background includes work with trauma and issues tied to abandonment, adoption and foster care, and blended family situations. In sessions she uses approachable methods that help clients identify patterns and build concrete skills.
She blends client-centered work with cognitive tools and meaning-focused conversations to address thoughts, behaviors, and life purpose. Motivational interviewing and narrative techniques support change and help people reframe difficult stories about themselves. Maria emphasizes finding strengths that carry people forward.
She offers clear steps to increase coping, improve communication, and manage anger or substance use. The goal is to help clients make practical changes that fit their daily lives. Her training includes a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in social work.
Maria lists her credentials as LCSW and CSW. She brings two and a half decades of experience and a compassionate, direct style to sessions. Sessions are offered in English and conducted online in formats that suit different needs, including video calls, phone, live chat, and text-based messaging.
Getting started involves a short matching questionnaire and then scheduling to match availability.
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Maria blends client-centered work with cognitive behavioral techniques and existential conversation to help people make meaningful change. Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and supporting a person’s own choices so they can build confidence and trust in themselves. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) addresses unhelpful thoughts and teaches practical skills for managing anxiety, depression, and day-to-day stress. Existential therapy looks at values, meaning, and life direction to help people who feel stuck or empty.Finding the right mix of methods is part of the work. Maria collaborates with each person to choose approaches that match their goals, needs, and preferences. She adjusts tools over time as progress and priorities shift so therapy stays useful and relevant.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video sessions allow face-to-face conversation and nonverbal cues, while phone sessions use less bandwidth and suit shorter check-ins. Live chat and text-based messaging work well for brief updates, ongoing coaching, or when written reflection feels easier. These options make it simpler to fit therapy into a busy life and to keep momentum between meetings.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- Colorado
- Languages
- English