Carleen Riley-Mercado, LMSW, LSCSW
Compassionate therapist focusing on body and values
About Carleen
Carleen Riley-Mercado is a licensed social worker with ten years of clinical experience. She helps people who are dealing with depression, anxiety, stress, addiction, parenting strain, and low self-esteem. Her approach is rooted in respect for each person's values and identity.
She honors the whole person in sessions, including faith, sexual orientation, and personal beliefs. That means she works with people from Christian and conservative backgrounds as well as LGBTQ+ and non-religious clients.
Background and approach
The focus is on making a respectful, understanding space where clients can feel heard. Carleen draws on somatic ideas alongside cognitive and acceptance-based methods. Sessions may involve noticing how the body responds to stress, learning practical thinking strategies, and clarifying personal values.
She uses these tools to help with trauma recovery, managing guilt and shame, and rebuilding self-worth. She also supports people facing relationship struggles, workplace challenges, grief, and life transitions. Caregiver stress, communication problems, and substance use concerns are included in her focus areas.
Her goal is to help clients move forward with compassion and clearer direction. Therapy with Carleen emphasizes connection, honesty, and steady progress. She aims to meet people where they are and to pace work according to each person's needs.
Taking the first step can feel hard, and she frames the work as a partnership toward more manageable days.
How somatic and acceptance-based approaches work online
Carleen integrates somatic ideas and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in her work. Somatic approaches invite attention to physical responses like tension, breath, and posture as a way to understand feelings and reduce reactivity. This can help with anxiety, trauma aftereffects, and managing stress in daily life.Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on clarifying personal values and taking small actions that match those values. It helps people get unstuck from unhelpful thinking patterns and move toward more meaningful routines and relationships.
Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the process. The therapist will work together with each person to decide which methods fit their goals, needs, and preferences. That collaboration helps shape session activities and pacing.
If you are considering online therapy, confirm the current session options before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy week, allow shorter check-ins when needed, and reduce travel time. It also supports practical ways to practice skills between meetings so those strategies can be used in everyday life.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Parenting issues
Also works with
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult 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)
- Gottman Method
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Systemic Therapy
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Michigan, Kansas
- Languages
- English