About Andrea
Andrea McLellan is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) based in California with 14 years of experience. She focuses on helping people reduce anxiety, manage stress, and navigate relationship and parenting concerns. Andrea also works with issues like trauma, grief, substance concerns, and phobias, using practical, goal-focused methods.
Andrea favors approaches that produce clear steps and measurable progress. She often uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help people change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, and solution-focused ideas to set small, doable goals.
Background and approach
She also draws on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), motivational interviewing, narrative, and psychodynamic perspectives when those views fit a person’s needs. Her background includes university teaching in psychology and forensic consultation related to sexual assault and child abuse cases. That work deepened her understanding of how family systems and early harm affect people across their lives.
Andrea pays particular attention to how past family chaos can shape current patterns and relationships. She encourages awareness, responsibility, courage, and forgiveness as parts of recovery. Sessions emphasize practical techniques alongside exploration of underlying patterns.
People leave with concrete skills to manage symptoms and plans for realistic next steps. Outside of practice she enjoys the outdoors - hiking, bird-watching, the beach, and camping. She also notes the particular needs of first responders and other public servants who carry others’ pain, and can work with people processing acute or post-traumatic stress responses.
How Andrea’s approaches work online
Andrea commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy in her online work. CBT focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, which is useful for anxiety, phobias, and mood concerns. DBT teaches skills for managing strong emotions, improving distress tolerance, and improving interpersonal effectiveness, which can help with relationship struggles and emotion regulation.She also uses motivational interviewing when people need help finding motivation to change, and narrative or psychodynamic ideas to look at how past experiences shape current patterns. Finding the right mix is part of the process - she collaborates with each person to pick approaches that fit their goals, preferences, and needs. That means trying things, checking what helps, and adjusting plans together.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video works well for a full session with visual cues. Phone sessions can be useful when bandwidth is limited or for a focused check-in. Live chat and text messaging suit people who prefer shorter exchanges or need flexible timing. These options make it easier to fit therapy around work, childcare, or other commitments while keeping a steady, ongoing course of care.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Parenting issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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