About Shelly
Shelly Flachs is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with 12 years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and trauma. She practices in Illinois and offers multiple online session formats to fit different schedules. Shelly focuses on practical steps clients can use day to day to feel steadier and more capable.
Her work blends straightforward tools from cognitive behavioral approaches with emotion-focused work and mindfulness practices. She helps people notice unhelpful thoughts, learn skills for strong emotions, and make changes that match their values.
Background and approach
Sessions are aimed at concrete goals such as improving sleep, managing mood swings, or reducing substance use. Shelly has a broad set of focus areas that include grief, bipolar disorder, addictions, LGBT concerns, relationship and intimacy issues, parenting stress, and ADHD. She also addresses less commonly listed problems such as abandonment, caregiving strain, chronic illness, body image, and codependency.
The range reflects a readiness to tackle practical life problems alongside deeper emotional patterns. People working with her can expect a collaborative approach. She uses tools from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT), Mindfulness Therapy, and Motivational Interviewing to match a person’s goals.
Sessions aim to build skills, clarify values, and make steady progress. Shelly’s LCSW credential and 12 years of practice guide her clinical judgment. She works with adults in Illinois and conducts video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging sessions to provide flexible support.
Therapeutic approaches applied in online sessions
CBT helps people spot and change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. In practice this means identifying stressful thoughts, testing them, and trying small behavioral experiments to see what helps reduce anxiety or improve mood.DBT offers skills for managing intense emotions and improving relationships. It emphasizes practical tools like distress tolerance and emotion regulation, which can be useful for mood instability, anger, or impulsive behaviors.
Shelly treats the choice of approach as a shared process. She will talk with each person about their goals and preferences, then try methods that fit. Adjustments are made over time based on what does and does not work for the individual.
Online work is offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is useful for more in-depth conversation and skill practice, while phone calls can be easier when bandwidth or camera use is an issue. Live chat or text messaging can support shorter check-ins, coaching between sessions, or people who prefer writing. These options make it easier to fit therapy around work, caregiving, or busy schedules while keeping focus on practical coping and progress.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Iowa
- Languages
- English