About Joan
Joan French helps people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, relationship struggles, trauma, grief, and challenges around identity and family. She sees adults who feel lonely, misunderstood, or stuck and offers a steady, listening presence to start untangling those problems. She creates a calm, nonjudgmental space where clients can say difficult things.
Joan emphasizes being heard and building connection as the first step toward feeling better. She brings warmth, patience, and occasional gentle humor into sessions to ease hard conversations.
Background and approach
Joan uses a mix of practical tools and reflective work. She draws on cognitive behavioral strategies to shift unhelpful thinking and teaches skills from dialectical behavior therapy for emotion regulation. She also uses acceptance and commitment therapy techniques to help people clarify values and take meaningful action.
Her approach is trauma-informed and integrative. That means Joan weaves different methods together based on what each person needs, including art-based activities when they fit. She aims to help people improve communication, set boundaries, and cope with life changes in ways that feel doable.
Joan has 17 years of experience and holds an IL LCPC credential, giving her a long background in counseling adults. She completed a Master of Arts degree in Community Counseling and an Art Therapy Certificate. Many people seek her out for support with relationship patterns, attachment and abandonment wounds, codependency, gender dysphoria, and career or sleep concerns.
She works with individual adults only and conducts sessions online through video, phone, live chat, or text messaging. Joan encourages anyone curious about therapy to take the first step and reach out to learn what a few sessions might feel like.
How Joan blends approaches for online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice unhelpful thoughts and choose actions that match their values. It is useful for anxiety, depression, and life transitions when someone wants clearer direction. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying thinking patterns that keep problems going and teaching practical steps to change reactions. It often helps with anxiety, sleep problems, and low mood. Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) centers on understanding emotions and improving connection in relationships; it can help with attachment wounds, communication problems, and feelings of isolation.Finding the right approach is part of the work Joan does with each person. She discusses goals and preferences in early sessions and combines techniques that fit the client’s needs. This collaborative process means methods may shift as progress is made or new challenges arise.
Online therapy with Joan is offered via video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video lets people use visual cues and have deeper conversations. Phone sessions can be a good option when bandwidth is limited or a quieter check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging support shorter, ongoing contact and skill practice between sessions. These options make therapy more flexible for work, caregiving, and busy schedules while keeping the focus on practical tools and emotional processing.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Attachment issues
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 17 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English