About Ryan
Ryan Smith is a licensed professional counselor (LPC) in Texas who helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship challenges. He works with clients on identity questions, parenting struggles, addiction concerns, trauma, grief, and self-esteem. He also supports people wrestling with body image, communication problems, and career stress.
Ryan uses plain, goal-oriented sessions to help people make steady progress. He draws on cognitive-behavioral tools to challenge unhelpful thoughts and build new habits.
Background and approach
He also uses client-centered listening so people feel heard and understood. His background includes 13 years of counseling in a range of settings. Early in his career he focused on anger management and later spent a lot of time helping parents and adults with family-related stress.
That experience informs how he works with relationship and parenting concerns today. Ryan adapts his approach to each person’s needs and aims to move toward goals efficiently. He can incorporate faith-based perspectives when asked, or work with people who prefer secular approaches.
He welcomes conversations about identity and supports LGBTQ concerns without judgment. Sessions are practical and conversational. Ryan helps clients set clear goals, practices concrete skills inside sessions, and suggests exercises to use between meetings.
He frames therapy as collaborative work toward specific outcomes, with attention to what helps in everyday life.
How his approaches translate to online therapy
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and reflecting so the person feels understood and can explore choices. Online sessions use this approach to create space for honest conversation and to help people define what matters to them. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at thought patterns and behavior that get in the way of goals; it includes practical exercises and homework to build new habits, which work well in video or messaging formats. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches emotion-regulation and coping skills for intense feelings and relationship stress; the skills can be practiced during sessions and reinforced between meetings.Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the process. The therapist will talk with each person about goals and preferences, then recommend techniques to try. That plan can change as progress is made, and adjustments are made collaboratively.
Online formats offer practical benefits. Video calls let people work face-to-face without commuting. Phone sessions can be a good fit when bandwidth or camera use is limited. Live chat and text-based messaging allow brief check-ins, skill practice, or ongoing support between full sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to continue work even when travel or logistics would otherwise get in the way.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 13 years
- Licensed
- Texas
- Languages
- English