About William
William Shonts is a licensed counselor in Tennessee with 22 years of clinical experience. He focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, family conflicts, and the challenges of life transitions. He approaches each person with respect, sensitivity, and compassion.
William aims to make the first steps toward change feel manageable and supported. He adapts conversations and plans to fit what each person needs. Sessions are practical and straightforward, with clear goals and small steps people can use between meetings.
Background and approach
He often draws on cognitive behavioral ideas to name unhelpful thoughts and test new behaviors. William also uses client-centered methods that keep the person’s perspective central. He listens for what matters most and helps people build on their strengths.
For people struggling with strong emotions, elements of dialectical behavior techniques are used to teach emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills. He has worked with a wide range of concerns such as attachment issues, codependency, caregiver stress, body image, and the effects of adoption and foster care. He also supports people coping with illness, trauma-related symptoms like dissociation, and relationship communication problems.
Sessions are offered in English and are available through multiple online formats. William describes therapy as a collaborative process where the person sets priorities and the therapist provides tools and steady support.
Therapeutic approaches for online care
William commonly blends client-centered therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy to guide online work. Client-centered therapy means he listens closely, follows the person’s lead, and helps build on existing strengths to reach goals. Cognitive behavioral therapy involves identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing small behavioral changes to reduce anxiety or low mood.He also draws on dialectical behavior therapy techniques when people need help managing intense emotions. Those techniques teach concrete skills for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and improving interpersonal effectiveness. Together these approaches aim to give practical tools that can be used between sessions.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. William will work with each person to choose methods that match their needs, goals, and preferences, and he adjusts the plan as progress is made.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to offer flexibility. Video is useful for fuller conversation and nonverbal cues, phone sessions can fit a break at work or use less data, and chat or messaging can support quick check-ins or ongoing reflections. These options help make regular contact easier to maintain alongside daily life.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Depression
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Body image
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 22 years
- Licensed
- Tennessee
- Languages
- English
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