About Polly
Polly Parks is a licensed clinical social worker who uses compassion and straightforward care to help people facing grief, trauma, mood struggles, and questions about gender and sexuality. She works with adults who are coping with anger, addiction, loss, and the stresses that come with prejudice or discrimination. Polly brings 14 years of experience in community and clinical settings in California.
Her style is practical and person-focused. She draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help people clarify what matters to them and take small steps toward those values.
Background and approach
Client-Centered Therapy guides how she listens and responds, making space for each person’s experience. She also uses Trauma-Focused and Emotionally-Focused approaches when trauma and relationship hurts need direct attention. Polly has supported people through complex issues such as BDSM and kink concerns, process addictions, domestic violence, and hospice and end-of-life matters.
She is familiar with substance use recovery and with Twelve-Step and SMART approaches from long-term personal recovery experience. This background informs how she approaches relapse concerns and ongoing sobriety work. Sessions are offered by video, phone, live chat, or text messaging to fit different schedules and comfort levels.
Polly schedules afternoons, evenings, and weekend appointments, and she asks that clients not attend sessions while driving. She holds a California LCSW credential and has completed the California Board of Behavioral Sciences telehealth training required by law. To begin, a short matching questionnaire and scheduling steps connect a person to therapy.
Therapeutic approaches for online healing and growth
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice hard thoughts and feelings while focusing on what matters most. It uses small, practical steps to move toward chosen values and can be useful for mood struggles, shame, and life direction. Client-Centered Therapy focuses on a nonjudgmental, listening-based relationship where the person’s experience guides the work; it supports people who need a steady, empathetic space to make changes.Finding the right approach is part of the work together. Polly will talk with each person about their goals, preferences, and history and then recommend methods that fit. The plan can change over time as needs shift, and decisions are made collaboratively rather than imposed.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy easier to schedule. Video works well for face-to-face feeling and visual cues, phone calls are useful when bandwidth is limited, live chat allows a typed conversation during a break, and ongoing text messaging can support short check-ins between sessions. These options help people fit sessions around work, caregiving, and daily life.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Anger management
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English