About Monique
Monique Gardner offers straightforward support for people dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, low self-esteem, and attention challenges. Monique uses clear, practical tools so conversations quickly feel useful. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) practicing in Virginia and aims to make sessions manageable for busy lives.
Monique meets each person where they are and focuses on what helps in day-to-day life. Sessions often include problem-solving, skills practice, and short exercises to reduce overwhelm.
Background and approach
She draws from strategies that teach coping skills and emotional awareness rather than relying on jargon. Her background includes work with people facing dual diagnosis, grief, mood and behavioral concerns, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive challenges, psychosis, and trauma. That experience informs a calm, steady approach to difficult moments.
Monique also has experience with LGBTQIA+ care and post-crisis supports. Therapy sessions are shaped by the client’s goals. Monique blends practical skill-building with acceptance-based ideas and attention to relational patterns.
She pays attention to how past attachments and current habits affect reactions and choices. Over the course of sessions she helps people build routines that reduce stress, manage mood, and improve focus. Techniques may include breathing and grounding, thought-challenging, values-driven action, and emotion regulation skills.
The emphasis is on small, repeatable steps that fit real life. Monique has five years of clinical experience and practices in Virginia. People meet her when they want a direct, empathetic clinician who offers workable tools and encourages steady progress.
Approaches that guide online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people notice thoughts without getting stuck and focus on actions that match their values. It can help when anxiety or low mood make it hard to move forward. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, breaks down unhelpful thinking and builds practical skills to change feelings and behavior through small experiments and practice. It is often useful for anxiety, depression, and attention-related struggles.Choosing an approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the person about goals, preferences, and what has helped before. Together they try methods and adjust as needed rather than committing to one path up front.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to fit different needs. Video allows face-to-face interaction for skills practice and deeper conversation. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a simpler check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging let people send short updates, ask questions between sessions, or have brief check-ins when life is busy. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, caregiving, or other routines while keeping the focus on steady, usable progress.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 5 years
- Licensed
- Virginia
- Languages
- English