About Maria
Maria Ward is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California with 13 years of experience. She focuses on practical help for people facing anxiety, stress, trauma, mood shifts, and relationship struggles. She speaks English and Spanish and aims to make starting therapy easier for worried parents and busy adults.
Maria listens first and asks simple questions to understand what matters most. She believes clients know their stories and brings tools to help manage symptoms and reach goals.
Background and approach
Sessions are collaborative and paced to each person's needs. Her background includes long-term clinical work across trauma, mood disorders, addiction concerns, and parenting stress. Maria uses approaches that help people notice thoughts, build stronger emotional connections, and change unhelpful patterns.
She also supports those coping with grief, major life changes, and compassion fatigue. In therapy, Maria often blends techniques from acceptance and commitment work, attachment-focused ideas, and cognitive behavior strategies. This mix helps people reduce avoidant habits, practice new ways of relating, and take values-based steps in daily life.
She offers tools for anger management, body image concerns, and communication problems. Maria is experienced helping clients with adoption and foster care questions, attachment issues, aging and caregiver stress, and disruptions such as divorce or separation. She aims to create a steady, respectful space where people can try new skills, test changes, and build on strengths.
How Maria’s Approaches Translate to Online Work
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them and then take small steps toward what matters. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and trying different behaviors to change mood and reactions. Emotionally-Focused ideas from attachment work help people understand patterns in relationships and practice new ways of connecting.Finding the right fit is part of the process. Maria works collaboratively to choose or combine approaches based on each person’s goals, preferences, and current struggles. She checks in and adapts methods as progress is made so treatment stays useful and realistic.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for deeper conversational work and guided exercises, phone sessions work well when bandwidth or camera use is a concern, live chat lets for shorter check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy schedules and keep momentum between appointments.
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
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Gottman Method
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 13 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English, Spanish
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