About Paula
Paula Donovan is a licensed clinical social worker with twenty years of experience helping people navigate stress, anxiety, grief, and relationship struggles. She brings a warm, down-to-earth style and an Irish accent that often eases first conversations. Paula respects each person’s knowledge about their own life and begins by listening closely to what matters most now.
She draws on somatic work to notice how the body holds tension and trauma, and on client-centered methods that keep the person's goals central.
Background and approach
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy tools are used when practical strategies can reduce symptoms and improve daily functioning. Mindfulness techniques are woven in to build moment-to-moment awareness and calm. Paula helps people untangle patterns that sap energy - from grief and loss to caregiving strain, addiction, or work and career pressures.
She also supports those facing fertility, end-of-life, and multicultural concerns. Her approach focuses on clear, manageable steps rather than jargon or complicated theory. Sessions aim to strengthen what already works in a person’s life while introducing new skills to cope with difficult feelings.
Expect honest conversation, some gentle body awareness, and occasional moments of levity. Paula practices in Virginia and conducts sessions in English. She encourages people who feel stuck, isolated, or overwhelmed to consider therapy as a practical next step.
Getting started involves a short matching questionnaire and scheduling a session that fits the client's needs and rhythm.
How Somatic and Skills-Based Therapy Work Online
Somatic work pays attention to how stress and trauma show up in the body. Online sessions can include guided body awareness, breathing exercises, and simple movement cues to notice tension and ease physical stress. These practices often help with anxiety, trauma responses, and chronic tension.Client-centered therapy focuses on respectful listening and helping people clarify their own goals. The therapist follows the person's lead, reflects what she hears, and supports choices that feel right for the client. This approach is useful for relationship concerns, grief, and making life changes.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) offers practical steps to change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. In online work this looks like identifying thinking patterns, trying small behavior experiments, and practicing new skills between sessions to reduce symptoms of depression or anxiety.
Finding the right approach is a team effort. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, try methods that fit, and adjust as needed. Clients and the therapist decide together which tools to use and when to shift course.
Online sessions by video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging offer flexibility for busy schedules and different comfort levels. These options make it easier to connect from home, manage caregiving or work obligations, and maintain continuity during life disruptions, while still working on concrete skills and body-based awareness.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also works with
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Fertility issues
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Virginia
- Languages
- English