About Joan
Joan Holmes is a Licensed Professional Counselor in New Jersey with 25 years in the field. She focuses on listening closely and helping people find practical ways to feel better. Her style is calm, patient, and respectful to each person’s story.
Joan uses a client-centered approach that starts by understanding what matters to the individual. She also draws on cognitive behavioral techniques to spot unhelpful thinking and acceptance and commitment ideas to help people move toward their values.
Background and approach
These methods are used to address stress, anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, parenting concerns, and relationship problems. Her background includes work with people in home settings and nonprofit social service programs. She has supported those coping with grief and bereavement, serious depression, and interpersonal difficulties.
Joan has experience alongside caregivers and with people facing chronic illness, addiction-related issues, and adjustment to major life changes. Sessions focus on clear, usable steps clients can try between meetings. Joan helps people improve communication, manage strong emotions like anger, and build steadier routines that support wellbeing.
She will listen first and then suggest tools a person can practice. People come to Joan for help with parenting strain, attachment concerns, adoption and foster care questions, and issues tied to career or self-esteem. She also works with those facing compassion fatigue and caregiver stress.
Joan aims to make the process straightforward and approachable so people can begin making changes that matter.
Approaches that translate well to online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on clarifying values and taking small steps toward them while learning to accept difficult feelings. It can help when life changes, grief, or anxiety make it hard to move forward. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts affect behavior and emotions and teaches practical skills to change unhelpful patterns. It is useful for anxiety, depression, and coping with stress. Client-Centered Therapy centers on listening, empathy, and helping a person feel understood so they can find their own solutions; this supports work on relationships, self-esteem, and personal goals.Finding the right approach is part of therapy. Joan will work together with each person to choose methods that fit their needs, goals, and preferences. That collaboration means techniques can be adjusted as progress is made and priorities change.
Online sessions offer flexibility and ways to fit care into a busy life. Video calls recreate face-to-face conversation, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat lets someone check in quickly, and text messaging supports short, ongoing contact between meetings. These options make it easier to keep regular appointments and use the skills developed in sessions in everyday situations.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- New Jersey
- Languages
- English