About Vanessa
Vanessa Martz is a licensed professional counselor with 28 years of experience. She brings a long, varied life to her counseling work, including military service, higher education roles, and many years of parenting and fostering. She identifies as a Christian and also serves as a licensed pastor; spiritual reflection is part of how she works with people who want that included.
Her style is warm and direct. She describes herself as motherly and compassionate while also willing to challenge a person’s spiritual beliefs when that is part of the work.
Background and approach
She values practical tools and straightforward conversations that aim to help people make choices they can live with. Vanessa uses a mix of approaches, often blending Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with grief-focused work, and drawing on client-centered and solution-focused ideas as needed. She tailors methods to match each person's situation rather than sticking to a single protocol.
This flexible approach is meant to help with coping, mood, and relationship concerns. Clients come to her for help with anxiety, depression, trauma and abuse, grief, stress, addictions, anger, self-esteem, parenting struggles, and major life changes. She also works with issues such as attachment, adoption and foster care concerns, caregiver stress, body image, and divorce and separation.
Vanessa practices in Alabama and conducts sessions in English. Her background includes extensive life experience with loss, caregiving, and blended family dynamics, which informs how she listens and responds.
Online approaches that fit daily life
Client-centered work focuses on listening and understanding the person's perspective. It helps people feel heard and supported while they sort through choices and emotions.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect. It offers practical steps to change unhelpful thought patterns and reduce symptoms like anxiety or low mood.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy concentrates on emotional experience and how it shows up in close relationships. It can help people recognize patterns in how they relate and learn new ways to connect.
Finding the right approach is part of the process. The therapist will work collaboratively to figure out which methods match a person’s needs, goals, and preferences. That might mean starting with CBT tools, exploring grief work, or combining approaches over time.
Online therapy gives practical flexibility. Video calls let a person use visual cues for deeper conversation. Phone sessions use less bandwidth and can be easier during a busy day. Live chat or text-based messaging can suit quick check-ins, brief reflections, or ongoing support between longer sessions. These options help fit therapy into work, caregiving, or other daily routines.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 28 years
- Licensed
- Alabama
- Languages
- English