About May
May Kirby is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) who uses relationship-focused therapy to help people move through fear, anxiety, and life transitions. She centers the connection between therapist and client and builds on each person’s strengths. Her style is direct but compassionate, aimed at practical steps rather than long explanations.
She draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice unhelpful thoughts and try different behaviors.
Background and approach
Attachment-based ideas guide conversations about how past relationships affect current patterns. Those approaches are used to address worries, panic, addictions, low self-worth, and grief in real-life ways. May brings around ten years of experience in outpatient mental health settings.
That experience includes work with people facing trauma and abuse, mood disorders, and obsessive or compulsive behaviors. She also helps people dealing with work stress, caregiver strain, parenting pressures, and the particular strains that affect LGBT people. Sessions focus on clear goals and small experiments between meetings.
Clients can expect to learn practical skills for sleep, anger, and coping with panic attacks. She also helps people sort patterns tied to family of origin, commitment concerns, and isolation. May works with adults in South Carolina and accepts international clients who speak English.
Her approach balances honest reflection with supportive coaching to help each person make usable change.
Therapeutic approaches adapted for online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then choose actions that match their values. This approach can help with anxiety, stress, and life transitions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors through practical exercises and experiments, which often suit issues like panic, depression, and problematic habits. Attachment-based therapy looks at how early relationship patterns shape current connections and can be useful when relationship worries, commitment issues, or family of origin concerns keep recurring.Finding the right fit is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to choose which approaches to try based on their goals, comfort level, and what has helped in the past. Sessions are used to test techniques, track progress, and adjust strategies together rather than assuming one method will suit everyone.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video sessions allow face-to-face conversation for deeper interaction, while phone calls use less bandwidth and can fit into a work break. Live chat and messaging offer quick check-ins, brief coaching, or ongoing support between longer sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and keep momentum when change takes time.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Grief
- Hoarding
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- South Carolina
- Languages
- English
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