About Deborah
Deborah Hilyard is a licensed mental health counselor with 34 years of experience in Florida. She earned her graduate degree in counseling from the University of Memphis and has worked across military family centers, campus career services, foster care assessments, and other community settings. Deborah brings steady, practical support when life feels overwhelming.
Her style is warm and interactive. She talks with people respectfully and without labels. Sessions focus on what matters to the client and on small, doable steps toward change.
Background and approach
Deborah commonly helps people who are facing stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, anger, depression, grief, and challenges around relationships and intimacy. She also supports clients dealing with parenting, career strain, sleep and eating concerns, addictions, ADHD, and caregiver stress. Her clinical work has included helping service members transition out of the military and counseling people affected by emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.
She has performed comprehensive assessments in the foster care system and worked with people navigating divorce, blended family issues, and attachment concerns. In sessions Deborah blends client-centered counseling with cognitive behavioral tools, mindfulness practices, EMDR techniques, and motivational interviewing. She adapts the approach to fit each person’s goals and pace.
Her goal is to help clients feel more in control and to build skills they can use between sessions.
How Deborah’s Approaches Translate to Online Care
Deborah uses client-centered work and cognitive behavioral techniques to guide online sessions. Client-centered therapy focuses on listening, empathy, and building a strong working relationship so people can set their own goals. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at thoughts and behaviors to find practical ways to reduce anxiety, manage mood, and change unhelpful patterns.EMDR is also part of her toolkit for addressing trauma-related memories and strong emotional responses. In online EMDR-informed work, the therapist helps a person process distressing memories while teaching grounding and coping skills to manage intense feelings. Choosing which approach to use is collaborative; Deborah will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and how they respond to different techniques to find the best fit.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video can support a closer face-to-face conversation, phone works well when less bandwidth is needed, live chat or text can be used for brief check-ins or ongoing coaching between calls. These options help people fit therapy into work, caregiving, or busy schedules while keeping consistent momentum.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Anger management
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- 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
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Traumatic brain injury
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 34 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English
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