About Kathleen
Dr. Kathleen Ayers helps people facing anxiety, stress, panic attacks, phobias, chronic pain, grief, and the emotional fallout of trauma. She also supports those dealing with sleep problems, low self-esteem, relationship strain, bipolar mood challenges, ADHD, and compassion fatigue.
Dr. Ayers is a California psychologist with three decades of experience and a practical, down-to-earth approach. She works with straightforward methods you can expect to use between sessions.
Therapy often includes short homework tasks and behavioral experiments to test what actually helps.
Background and approach
Her style blends clear skill-building with space to talk about past events when that feels useful for current problems. Dr. Ayers draws on cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy to address thoughts, emotions, and coping habits.
She has long experience helping people who live with chronic pain and other long-term medical issues, and she understands how physical symptoms can affect mood and daily life. She also brings focused work for sleep disruption, panic disorder, hoarding concerns, seasonal mood changes, and somatic symptoms.
Her background includes work with group formats as well as individual meetings, and she emphasizes practical steps that fit into busy lives. People find her approach warm and matter-of-fact. She aims to create a caring setting where reports of pain or unusual experiences are taken seriously and explored for real-world solutions.
How ACT, CBT, and DBT work in online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them. It focuses on values and small steps toward a life that matters, which can help with anxiety, chronic pain, and avoidance like phobias.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy looks at patterns of thought and behavior and tests what actually changes mood and functioning. CBT often uses brief exercises and homework to reduce panic, improve sleep, or shift unhelpful thinking.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy teaches concrete skills in emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and effective communication. DBT-style skills can be useful for strong mood swings, intense anger, and situations that feel overwhelming.
Choosing the right approach is a team process. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, needs, and preferences, and then try methods that fit. They will adjust the plan based on what works in real life.
Online formats offer flexible ways to work through these approaches. Video calls allow face-to-face teaching of skills and real-time practice. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited. Live chat or text messaging suits short check-ins, brief coaching, or follow-up between sessions. Together these formats make it simpler to fit therapy into busy schedules and to continue work when in-person meetings are not possible.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Grief
- Hoarding
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Somatization
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 32 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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