About Valerie
Dr. Valerie McGaha is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Oklahoma with 21 years of experience helping people who feel stuck by stress, anxiety, depression, and addiction. She focuses on practical steps that lead to small changes that add up.
Her approach centers on listening, building awareness, and identifying the everyday barriers that keep someone from feeling like themselves again. She works with people who face relationship strain and family problems, and with those trying to sustain sobriety from drug or alcohol addiction.
Background and approach
She also supports people coping with trauma, loss, chronic illness, or complex feelings such as guilt, shame, and abandonment. Sessions aim to build compassion for oneself while increasing the skills needed to move forward. Dr.
McGaha uses a mix of methods to fit each person’s needs, including cognitive tools to change unhelpful thought patterns and strategies to manage intense emotions. She helps clients notice patterns rooted in attachment and improve communication that often fuels family conflicts or romantic stress. The focus is on concrete changes rather than labels.
Her work highlights practical coping skills, stronger decision-making, and reclaiming everyday joy. She emphasizes collaboration, so clients help shape goals and the pace of work. Progress often comes from small, consistent steps taken between sessions.
If someone is worried about addiction, relationship conflict, or persistent low mood, Dr. McGaha offers goal-focused conversations and tools to try at home. She invites people to bring their real concerns and practical questions into the room.
Therapeutic approaches and how they work online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice unhelpful thoughts and commit to actions that reflect their values. It’s useful for anxiety, depression, and motivation problems because it focuses on what matters most and small steps toward those things.Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early bonds shape current relationships and emotional reactions. It can help people improve how they relate to partners and family members and reduce patterns that cause conflict or distance.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Dr. McGaha will collaborate with each person to decide which methods fit their needs, goals, and comfort level. She adapts tools from different therapies as needed so treatment matches the individual rather than a single method.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video allows more visual connection for in-depth sessions, while phone calls can be easier when bandwidth is low. Live chat and text messaging work well for brief check-ins, skill practice, or when a shorter touchpoint fits a busy day. These options make it easier to keep appointments, practice skills between sessions, and stay connected to a licensed professional from different locations.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Communication problems
- Depression
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Jealousy
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Experience
- 21 years
- Licensed
- Oklahoma
- Languages
- English