About Vanessa
Vanessa Smith is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker practicing in Louisiana. She brings six years of clinical experience and focuses on practical help for common life struggles. Her approach is warm and interactive, with an emphasis on listening and understanding each person's story.
Vanessa uses straightforward conversations to help people make small, useful changes. She guides clients to notice patterns and try new skills that fit their daily lives.
Background and approach
Sessions are collaborative - she asks questions, reflects what she hears, and helps people set clear steps forward. She has particular experience addressing stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and addiction concerns. Vanessa also supports people facing relationship strain, parenting challenges, bipolar mood concerns, and the fallout from trauma and abuse.
She helps people cope with life changes and compassion fatigue while exploring purpose and next steps. Therapy draws on practical methods such as cognitive behavioral tools, dialectical behavior ideas, motivational interviewing, and solution-focused techniques. Vanessa emphasizes the client's own strengths and decisions while offering strategies to manage symptoms and behavior.
Clients who prefer an approachable, respectful counselor often do well with her style. She helps people break large problems into manageable tasks. The work focuses on concrete goals, steady progress, and building skills to use beyond sessions.
How Vanessa’s Approaches Work Online
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and respect. The therapist follows the person's lead, reflects their experience, and helps them find their own solutions. This approach is useful when someone needs a compassionate space to sort through feelings.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and actions. It teaches practical skills to change unhelpful thinking and behavior. People often use CBT for anxiety, depression, and stress when they want clear tools to try between sessions.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with the client about goals and preferences and decide together which methods to try first. That collaboration makes it easier to adjust the plan as progress unfolds.
Online sessions can use video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video lets people see facial cues and have richer conversations. Phone sessions work when bandwidth is limited or when being off-camera helps concentration. Live chat and text are useful for quick check-ins, shorter notes, or when typing feels easier than talking. These options make scheduling more flexible and help therapy fit into busy lives.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
Also listed
- Bipolar disorder
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Life purpose
- Parenting issues
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Trauma and abuse
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 6 years
- Licensed
- Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas
- Languages
- English