About Cathy
Cathy Smith, LPC, draws on nearly two decades of clinical experience to help people manage stress, anxiety, phobias, and life transitions. She brings a calm, direct style and focuses on building a trusting relationship first. Her approach centers on listening and working with each person’s strengths to set clear, achievable goals.
Cathy began her career after undergraduate studies in sociology, criminology, and Spanish. Early work in residential care for youth sparked her interest in counseling.
Background and approach
She later earned a master’s degree in special education and taught in a range of settings before completing a master’s in counseling psychology and earning her LPC credential. Her practice blends several practical methods. She uses client-centered conversation to understand what matters most to the person.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps identify and change unhelpful thinking and behavior. Mindfulness techniques add simple tools for managing stress and grounding between sessions. She also draws on psychodynamic ideas to look at long-standing patterns and on solution-focused strategies to set small, reachable steps.
Cathy often pairs education about coping skills with hands-on practice. The emphasis is on building abilities that fit into daily life rather than lengthy theory. Sessions are offered in English and Spanish and she sees people across a wide age range.
Cathy works with a broad set of concerns including trauma and abuse, grief, addictions, relationship and intimacy issues, parenting strains, ADHD, and body image. Her goal is to help people notice their strengths and use them to move forward.
Approaches that translate well to online therapy
Cathy often uses Client-Centered Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in her work. Client-Centered Therapy focuses on understanding the person’s experience through listening and empathy, which helps build trust and clarify goals. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is practical and skill-based, helping people notice unhelpful thoughts and try different behaviors to reduce anxiety, manage phobias, or improve mood.She also incorporates Mindfulness Therapy to teach simple grounding and breathing exercises. Mindfulness techniques can reduce stress and help people stay present between sessions. Cathy treats approach selection as a collaborative process; she will discuss goals, try methods that fit those goals, and adjust plans together as progress is reviewed.
Online formats offer practical flexibility for that collaborative work. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth or camera use is limited. Live chat and text-based messaging work well for shorter check-ins, homework prompts, or practicing new skills between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and to try different formats to see what works best.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Domestic violence
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 18 years
- Licensed
- Michigan
- Languages
- English, Spanish
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