About Paula
Paula Steele is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with fifteen years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, parenting strain, depression, and addiction. She practices from Maine and draws on years of hands-on work supporting people through relationship and family difficulties. Paula emphasizes practical skills and steady support to help clients move forward.
Her approach centers on listening first. Paula creates a calm space where people can describe what’s happening and what matters to them.
Background and approach
She uses straightforward tools to reduce overwhelming feelings and to improve daily routines, sleep, and self-esteem. Paula combines client-centered work with evidence-informed techniques. She often uses cognitive behavioral ideas to spot patterns of thinking that make problems worse.
Mindfulness practices are brought in to reduce reactivity and improve focus on the present moment. She also draws on motivational interviewing and narrative ideas to help people clarify values and rewrite unhelpful stories about themselves. That mix can help with addiction, ADHD, postpartum struggles, grief, and shifting life roles.
Paula understands the practical strain of caregiving and parenting because she is a parent herself and has experience caring for a child with special needs. She aims to help with caregiving stress, communication difficulties, and managing the many tasks that make life feel overwhelming. Sessions focus on clear goals, small doable steps, and building supports that fit each person’s life.
Paula works with adults who want down-to-earth help for life's challenges and changes.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Paula commonly uses client-centered work to focus sessions on each person’s experience and goals. This means the therapist listens closely and follows what matters most to the client, then helps shape sessions around those priorities.She also uses cognitive behavioral ideas to identify thoughts and habits that keep problems going. That approach breaks concerns into clear parts and offers concrete steps to change thinking and behavior, which can help with anxiety, sleep, and low mood.
Mindfulness techniques are included to help reduce stress and improve attention. These are simple practices people can use between sessions to lower reactivity and stay grounded during tough moments.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Paula will collaborate with each person to choose methods that match their needs, goals, and preferences. She adjusts tools over time based on what helps most.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video sessions allow face-to-face conversation, phone sessions can fit into a busy day or use less bandwidth, live chat supports shorter check-ins, and messaging makes it possible to share updates between meetings. These options aim to make therapy easier to fit into everyday life.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Parenting issues
- Depression
Also works with
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- LGBT
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- Maine
- Languages
- English