About Paula
Dr. Paula Alvarez helps people who are feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, depression, grief, addiction, or big life changes. She is Dr.
Paula Alvarez, a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) with 35 years of experience. Her approach is straightforward and practical, aimed at helping someone take small steps toward relief and clearer choices. She listens first and follows the client's lead, using a client-centered stance that treats each person as the expert on their own life.
Background and approach
When helpful, she introduces tools from cognitive behavioral work to spot unhelpful thoughts and change routines. She also draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ideas to help people live by their values, and on dialectical skills for managing strong emotions. Her background includes long experience in both inpatient and outpatient settings, and work addressing trauma, cultural issues, and geriatric concerns.
She has led group work with domestic violence perpetrators in English and Spanish, and brings that practical experience into one-on-one work. Her training also includes a doctorate in organizational psychology and decades of clinical practice across settings. Clients can expect clear options in sessions - talk, skill practice, short homework tasks, or reading suggestions when that fits.
She is comfortable discussing relationship strains, parenting stress, career crossroads, identity and LGBT matters, and complicated feelings like guilt and shame. Dr. Alvarez works with people coping with illness, end-of-life concerns, immigration stress, and the loneliness that can come with big transitions.
She practices in Missouri and offers help in English. Dr. Alvarez accepts international clients and uses flexible session formats to meet people where they are.
Approaches that fit into online therapy
Dr. Alvarez often draws from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in online work. ACT focuses on helping people notice what matters to them and take small steps toward those values even when thoughts or feelings are hard. CBT helps identify unhelpful thinking patterns and test new ways of behaving to reduce symptoms and improve daily functioning.She also uses a client-centered stance that keeps the person's goals front and center. Finding the right approach is collaborative; she will talk with each person about goals and try methods that match their needs and preferences. Together they will tweak tools and strategies until something feels useful.
Online sessions can be scheduled as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to suit different needs. Video is helpful for face-to-face conversation and skill practice, phone works when bandwidth is limited, live chat offers a shorter check-in option, and messaging lets someone pace work over the week. These options make it easier 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
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Anger management
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed
- California, Missouri, Illinois
- Languages
- English