About Patricia
Patricia Prendergast is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people facing addiction, trauma, grief, parenting stress, and low self-esteem. She has a calm, practical style and offers clear guidance when things feel overwhelming. Parents and adults often contact her when relationships, work, or life transitions create persistent worry or burnout.
Patricia draws on 28 years of experience in clinical social work. She listens first, then helps people identify small, doable steps toward their goals.
Background and approach
Sessions focus on real-life problems like managing anger, coping with loss, navigating adoption or foster care issues, and addressing patterns that keep someone stuck. Her work often looks at how early attachment and life stories shape reactions today. She uses client-centered talking, cognitive behavioral tools, motivational interviewing, and narrative methods to help people reframe painful experiences and try new behaviors.
The emphasis is on practical change rather than labels or jargon. Patricia also supports people dealing with compassion fatigue, caregiver stress, and career or life-purpose questions. She helps clients sort through communication problems, commitment issues, and feelings of guilt or shame.
Strategies are tailored to each person’s situation and goals. Clients meet with Patricia by phone, video, live chat, or messaging. Sessions use a subscription model that can be canceled at any time.
She practices in Illinois and conducts therapy in English.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Attachment-based work looks at how early relationships shape current reactions and helps people build more supported ways of relating. It can be useful for those dealing with abandonment, attachment issues, or trouble trusting others. Client-centered therapy focuses on the person in the room - the therapist listens without judgment and follows the client’s pace to clarify goals and feelings. This approach helps people who need space to find their own answers. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, teaches practical skills to change thinking and behavior patterns, which is helpful for depression, anxiety, anger, and many day-to-day problems.Finding the best approach is a team effort. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t worked before. Together they will try strategies and adjust the plan as needed so the work fits the client’s life and needs.
Online sessions are offered by video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation, phone sessions can work when bandwidth is limited, live chat is useful for brief check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to schedule around work, childcare, and other responsibilities while still accessing regular therapeutic support.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Eating disorders
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-love
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 28 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English