About Patricia
Patricia Riley is a licensed clinical social worker in California. She brings two decades of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship challenges. Patricia uses clear, practical conversation to help people take the first steps toward change.
She focuses on everyday struggles like parenting pressures, family conflict, grief, and problems with intimacy or self-esteem. She also supports people facing addictions, trauma and abuse, and life transitions such as divorce or caregiving responsibilities.
Background and approach
Patricia works with a wide range of concerns that can feel overwhelming in daily life. In sessions she keeps things straightforward. She listens closely, asks concrete questions, and helps clients try new ways of coping.
She often draws on tools from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to shift patterns of thinking and behavior. She also uses Motivational Interviewing to help people find their own reasons to change. Patricia tailors each conversation and plan to the person in front of her.
That can mean short-term problem solving or longer work on long-standing patterns. She aims to empower people so they can make steady progress between sessions. Patricia holds a Licensed Clinical Social Worker credential - LCSW - and practices in California.
Her approach blends practical techniques with steady, respectful support to help people move toward more stable and satisfying lives.
How CBT and Motivational Interviewing work online
Patricia commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thoughts and habits. In plain terms this means identifying patterns that cause stress or low mood, testing different responses, and practicing new behaviors that lead to better results. CBT can be useful for anxiety, depression, eating issues, and many day-to-day problems.She also uses Motivational Interviewing to help people clarify what matters to them and to strengthen their own reasons for change. This approach is conversational and nonjudgmental, and it is helpful when someone feels stuck or unsure about taking next steps for recovery or life change.
Choosing the right approach is a shared process. During early sessions she will ask about goals, past attempts, and preferences, and then suggest an approach to try. The plan can be adjusted over time based on what works best for the person.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to meet. Video calls let you work visually, phone sessions avoid screens and use less bandwidth, live chat can be a quicker check-in, and text messaging supports short reflections between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, caregiving, or other busy schedules while still using the same therapeutic tools.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Grief
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English