About Brenda
Brenda Atkinson is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 31 years of experience. She holds the LCSW and CSW credentials and practices from Virginia. She focuses on helping people manage anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, and relationship and parenting concerns.
Her work often centers on life transitions like early adulthood, middle age, and later life. She helps people facing mood disorders, substance use concerns, career stress, and compassion fatigue. She also supports those coping with attachment and abandonment issues.
Background and approach
Brenda trained in psychology and social work at the University of Louisville, where she studied family systems. That background informs her view of personal struggles in the context of relationships and family patterns. She blends that perspective with practical techniques to address day-to-day problems.
Her style is straightforward and empathetic. She aims to build a genuine, working relationship and to set clear goals with each person. Sessions use tools from cognitive behavioral therapy and emotion-focused work to change unhelpful patterns.
Brenda also incorporates client-centered ideas and elements of dialectical behavior therapy when they fit a person's needs. She often uses mindfulness and existential questions to help clients find meaning during hard transitions. Many people seek her help for stress, intimacy struggles, grief, addictions, and coping with major life changes.
Therapeutic Approaches and Online Care
Attachment-based work looks at how past relationships shape current feelings and reactions; it helps when fear of abandonment, attachment issues, or relationship patterns cause distress. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, focuses on spotting and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors to reduce anxiety and depression. Emotionally-Focused Therapy helps people name and process strong emotions and improve emotional connection in close relationships.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals, preferences, and what feels most helpful. Together they choose techniques and adjust them over time so the plan fits the person's changing needs.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video is useful for a fuller face-to-face feel, phone works well when bandwidth is limited, chat can be a quick check-in, and messaging suits short reflections or ongoing notes between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to keep momentum during life transitions.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 31 years
- Licensed
- Georgia, Virginia
- Languages
- English
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