About Betsy
Dr. Betsy Puentes is a licensed clinician with decades of experience who uses practical, evidence-based approaches to help people facing anxiety, depression, stress, and life transitions. She brings a calm, straightforward style and encourages clients to build on their own strengths.
Dr. Puentes holds a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology and a Master's in Clinical Psychology, and she maintains licensure as an LMFT and an LPC in Texas. She helps people tackle low self-esteem, motivation struggles, and career concerns with clear, goal-focused work.
Background and approach
For many, that means learning skills for coping and changing unhelpful thinking patterns. She also supports those dealing with trauma, relationship strains, anger, and issues related to addiction. Her approach pulls from several methods to match each person's needs.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is used to identify and shift unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people focus on values and take action even when emotions are hard. Emotionally-Focused Therapy informs her work with relationship and attachment concerns.
Dr. Puentes frames therapy as a partnership. She listens to what matters to each person, then offers practical steps and exercises to practice between sessions.
Her long experience gives her a wide range of options to suggest when someone feels stuck. Clients should expect straightforward conversations, clear goals, and skill-building exercises. Sessions typically include talking through current challenges, practicing coping strategies, and planning small changes that add up over time.
Her Texas licensure and decades of clinical work shape a steady, experienced presence in sessions.
Therapeutic approaches you can use online
Dr. Puentes often draws from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy when working with clients online. CBT focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and changing behaviors that reinforce distress, which can help with anxiety, depression, and stress. ACT emphasizes clarifying personal values and taking meaningful action even when feelings are difficult, which supports coping with life changes and motivation struggles.She treats the choice of approach as a team decision. The therapist will listen to what matters to the client, try an approach that fits the problem, and adjust based on how things are progressing. That collaborative rhythm helps tailor work to goals, whether someone needs skill practice, values-based planning, or help with relationship patterns.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, and each has practical advantages. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues, phone sessions use less bandwidth and can be easier on the schedule, live chat can be useful for a focused check-in, and text messaging supports short updates or ongoing skill coaching between appointments. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and keep continuity when travel or work demands change.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Self esteem
- Career difficulties
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 46 years
- Licensed
- Texas
- Languages
- English
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