Shirley Southard, LCMHC

Shirley Southard is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor with 20 years in the human services field. She helps people manage stress, anxiety, addiction, anger, depression, ADHD, relationship and family concerns, trauma, grief, parenting challenges, and life transitions. She also supports issues tied to aging, isolation, veterans and armed forces matters, and substance use. Her style is warm and nonjudgmental. She aims to listen and accept people as they are. Sessions focus on practical steps that help clients move toward a more hopeful future. Shirley draws on client-centered methods to make sure each person feels heard. She also uses cognitive behavioral techniques to identify unhelpful thoughts and change behavior. Motivational interviewing and mindfulness are part of her toolkit when clients need help finding direction or calming strong emotions. Her background includes work with mental health, developmental disability, and substance abuse populations, and experience with assisted medication management. She has worked with active military members and their families. Shirley holds a Master’s degree in Counseling and is licensed in North Carolina as an LCMHC. In sessions she blends practical education with skill-building. That can mean learning coping skills, practicing communication strategies, or developing step-by-step plans to address addiction and mood symptoms. She often includes caregivers and parents in ways that support individual goals. People seeking help typically begin by describing the problems that feel most pressing. Shirley helps break those problems into manageable steps and coaches clients as they try new strategies.

How Shirley’s approaches translate to online therapy

Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and understanding. The therapist creates a respectful space and follows the client's lead to set goals and priorities. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, helps people spot unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviors to ease symptoms like anxiety and depression. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches concrete skills in emotion regulation and distress tolerance to manage strong feelings and impulsive behaviors. Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. Shirley will work together with each person to identify goals, try different strategies, and adjust plans based on what feels helpful. The aim is to find tools that fit the client's needs and daily life. Confirm the available session formats before booking since the biography does not list them. Online therapy can make it easier to fit care into a busy schedule, reduce travel time, and allow shorter check-ins when needed. It can also make it simpler to involve a parent or caregiver in a session when that supports the client's goals. Licensed professionals can adapt these methods to work over remote sessions, focusing on skill practice, homework, and step-by-step plans that transfer to everyday situations.