About Barbara
Barbara Leigh is a licensed professional counselor (LPC) with 38 years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship and identity concerns. She works with individuals on issues like self-esteem, addiction, grief, intimacy-related challenges, parenting strain, ADHD, and bipolar mood concerns. Her style is patient and direct, aimed at helping people take clear next steps.
She focuses on practical skills and education about how thoughts, feelings, and body responses interact.
Background and approach
Sessions emphasize learning coping strategies, practicing new habits, and setting realistic goals. Barbara favors approaches that teach skills people can use between meetings rather than relying only on talk. Her background includes work in inpatient and outpatient settings, day treatment, residential programs, in-home care, independent practice, and virtual counseling.
That variety informs a flexible approach to differing life situations. She has long experience offering remote care and understands how to adapt methods for online work. Barbara draws on client-centered work, cognitive behavioral ideas, motivational interviewing, solution-focused techniques, and trauma-focused methods.
She aims to help people get ready to change, then support them through the steps of change. Sessions are collaborative and paced to each person’s needs. People can expect a balance of compassion, realism, and occasional humor during sessions.
Barbara prefers working with clients who want durable change and is comfortable supporting longer-term personal growth. She helps create treatment plans that challenge while remaining doable.
Approaches and online options that fit your life
Barbara uses cognitive behavioral approaches and trauma-focused methods to help people understand patterns and build new habits. Cognitive behavioral work focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing small behavior changes to alter mood and routines. Trauma-focused methods help people process difficult events in ways that reduce their ongoing impact and improve daily functioning.She also uses client-centered ideas to keep the work focused on each person's values and goals, and motivational interviewing techniques to help people find their own reasons to change. Choosing the right mix is collaborative - the therapist will discuss options and adapt methods to match goals, pace, and comfort level so the plan fits the person, not the other way around.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexible ways to connect. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and skill demonstration, phone sessions work when bandwidth is limited, live chat is useful for shorter check-ins, and text messaging supports ongoing brief check-ins or reminders. These formats help make consistent care easier to schedule around work, caregiving, or mobility needs.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Grief
- HIV / AIDS
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Traumatic brain injury
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 38 years
- Licensed
- Alabama, Oregon, South Carolina, Georgia, Washington
- Languages
- English