About Nora
Nora O'Connor is a licensed clinical social worker who brings 15 years of experience to her practice in California. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, addiction recovery, and LGBTQ+ concerns. She also helps with self-esteem, career questions, and coping with major life changes.
Nora uses practical methods rooted in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thoughts and habits. She combines that with somatic awareness to help people reconnect with bodily signals.
Background and approach
Trauma-informed ideas guide her work with people who have faced painful events. Sessions are straightforward and focused on concrete steps. Nora often works on skills for calming intense emotions, solving immediate problems, and building clearer boundaries.
She also supports people dealing with caregiver strain, adoption and foster care issues, and recovery from domestic violence. People facing shame, guilt, or complex grief find a direct approach to rebuilding self-worth. Nora also addresses issues like panic attacks, mood disorders, codependency, and compassion fatigue.
She includes practical strategies for money worries and career direction when those stressors come up. Nora maintains a somatic practice alongside her social work. That background informs gentle body-focused exercises in sessions when they feel useful.
The goal is to help people leave therapy with clearer tools and a stronger sense of direction.
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Her work often combines Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Somatic Therapy to address both thoughts and bodily experience. CBT focuses on identifying unhelpful thinking patterns and testing new ways of behaving, which helps with anxiety, panic, and mood concerns. Somatic Therapy pays attention to body sensations and simple movement or breathing exercises to reduce stress and ground someone during intense feelings.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals, try a method, and adjust based on what feels most helpful. That means sessions can shift between skills practice, short-term problem solving, and body-focused techniques as needed.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to match different needs. Video works well for deeper conversations and skill coaching. Phone sessions can be easier when internet speed is limited. Chat and messaging are useful for brief check-ins, homework support, or shorter sessions that fit a busy day. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent and to use techniques when life feels hectic.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Domestic violence
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English