About Kathleen
Kathleen McCarthy is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) based in Wisconsin with 34 years of experience. She offers practical, down-to-earth psychotherapy that focuses on helping people reduce anxiety, manage stress, and face phobias and trauma. Her approach is straightforward and centered on helping a person make real changes in daily life.
Kathleen blends several approaches to match each person's needs. She uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help identify unhelpful thoughts and build new patterns.
Background and approach
She also incorporates Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing along with hypnotherapy and mindfulness techniques when those approaches fit the concern. Sessions emphasize clear goals and step-by-step strategies. Her background includes long experience working with mood disorders, grief, substance concerns, relationship strain, and parenting stress.
She also supports people facing career transitions, compulsive behaviors, and recovery from trauma or violence. Phobias are among the issues she addresses through targeted therapeutic work. Kathleen prefers to keep sessions practical and focused.
She works with people to recognize patterns, try new skills, and track small changes over time. Conversations usually include homework or short practices to use between sessions. People who contact her can expect a calm, steady presence and a plan aimed at achievable improvements.
She helps clients set clear goals and chooses methods that fit their needs and pace.
Approaches for anxiety, trauma, and phobias online
Kathleen uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice unhelpful thoughts and try small behavior changes. CBT often focuses on concrete skills you can practice between sessions to reduce anxiety and improve daily routines.She also uses Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing to address distress linked to traumatic memories and intense fears. EMDR sessions aim to reduce the power of upsetting memories and can be combined with mindfulness or hypnotherapy when appropriate.
Deciding which approach to use is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, past experiences, and how comfortable they feel with different techniques. Together they choose methods and adapt them as progress is made.
Online therapy offers several practical benefits. Video calls let the therapist observe reactions and guide interventions that work best with EMDR or CBT. Phone sessions can be simpler when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging are useful for brief check-ins, sharing coping strategies, or scheduling adjustments. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and keep continuity when travel or work gets in the way.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 34 years
- Licensed
- Wisconsin
- Languages
- English
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