About Vanessa
Vanessa Martz is a Licensed Professional Counselor with 28 years of experience. She combines life experience and clinical work to guide people through loss, stress, anxiety, and relationship struggles. Vanessa brings a steady, compassionate presence and practical methods to sessions.
Vanessa draws on a long and varied life history, including military service and many years in higher education. She has been a parent by birth and adoption, fostered children for decades, and navigated blended family changes and caregiving stress.
Background and approach
Those experiences shape how she listens and responds in therapy. Her approach blends straightforward cognitive behavioral techniques with grief work and client-centered talking. Sessions focus on concrete skills, clearer thinking, and finding small shifts that reduce daily strain.
She also uses mindfulness and solution-focused ideas when they fit a person’s needs. Vanessa says spirituality is part of her personal outlook and sometimes becomes part of the work. She notes she will challenge a client’s spiritual beliefs during treatment, so she is not the right match for someone who does not want to address spirituality.
Her goal is to help people reach greater peace with the choices they make. People often come for help with anxiety, depression, trauma and abuse, parenting strain, grief, addictions, and phobias. Vanessa aims to help clients move toward greater joy in everyday life.
Her tone is direct, warm, and pragmatic.
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Vanessa uses cognitive behavioral therapy and emotionally-focused ideas to help people understand patterns and shift unhelpful thinking. CBT looks at thoughts and behaviors and teaches practical steps to reduce anxiety, manage anger, and change routines that no longer help. Emotionally-focused work focuses on identifying and naming feelings in relationships and learning new ways to connect or respond when emotions run high.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will listen to a person’s goals and needs, try specific techniques, and adjust the plan together until it fits. Clients can expect to discuss what is working and what isn’t so the work stays practical and tailored.
Online sessions are available as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video allows face-to-face conversation for skills practice and emotional check-ins. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and messaging work well for brief ideas, weekly check-ins, or when writing helps someone process their thoughts. These options make scheduling more flexible and help therapy fit into busy lives.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 28 years
- Licensed
- Alabama
- Languages
- English
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