About Marlene
Marlene Smith is a licensed professional counselor who focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, relationship struggles, and depression. She speaks plainly and keeps sessions grounded in everyday life. Her style aims to make it easier to talk about hard things without feeling judged.
She uses practical tools from cognitive behavioral therapy to spot unhelpful thinking and build new habits. Marlene also draws on client-centered techniques to create a warm, nonjudgmental space where people guide the pace and focus of work.
Background and approach
Attachment-informed ideas help when trust, closeness, or past caregiving patterns affect current relationships. In a typical session she listens first, then offers simple strategies to try between meetings. Those strategies might include small behavioral steps, communication practice, or short exercises to manage intense feelings.
She emphasizes skills that can be put into practice the same week, so progress feels tangible. Marlene has three years of professional experience as an LPC in West Virginia. That background includes helping people facing life transitions, adoption and foster care concerns, aging and geriatric issues, body image and cancer-related challenges, and family or fatherhood stresses.
She also works with those coping with trauma-related symptoms such as dissociation, attachment wounds, or the aftermath of separation and domestic violence. People choose her when they want direct, compassionate help to solve current problems and build coping skills. She supports clients who prefer a practical, relationship-focused approach and who want clear steps they can try between sessions.
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Attachment-Based Therapy emphasizes how early bonds shape current relationships and emotional patterns; it helps when trust, closeness, or separation issues affect everyday life. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions and offers straightforward techniques to change unhelpful thinking and behaviors.Choosing an approach happens together. The therapist will listen to your goals and try a method that fits your needs and preferences. If an approach doesn’t feel right, adjustments are made so the plan reflects what helps you make progress.
Online sessions are offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to add flexibility. Video works well for face-to-face conversation and practicing communication skills. Phone sessions can fit a lunch break or when bandwidth is limited. Live chat or text messaging is helpful for brief check-ins, quick skill reminders, or when writing feels easier than speaking. These options make it simpler to keep therapy consistent around work, family, or health demands.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 3 years
- Licensed
- West Virginia
- Languages
- English