Sharmen Rutherford, LPC-MHSP, LPC
Compassionate somatic-informed counseling for life changes
About Sharmen
Sharmen Rutherford is a Licensed Professional Counselor - Mental Health Service Provider (LPC-MHSP) and holds an LPC credential. She brings 16 years of experience helping people navigate anxiety, depression, addiction, trauma, eating concerns, and life changes. Her style is direct and practical, focused on building strength and tools people can use day to day.
Sharmen combines somatic awareness with talk-based methods to help people notice how stress shows up in the body and the mind.
Background and approach
She draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help clients notice thoughts, clarify values, and try new behaviors. Dialectical Behavior Therapy and client-centered practices are used when emotion regulation and validation are priorities. Her work covers a wide range of concerns including stress, grief, sleeping problems, anger, self-esteem struggles, and complicated relationships.
She also addresses addiction, co-occurring conditions, bipolar concerns, ADHD, and issues like codependency, body image, and attachment difficulties. First responder stress and compassion fatigue are included in her focus areas. Sharmen has licensure in Tennessee as LPC-MHSP 6766 and in Alabama as LPC 4335.
She offers services from Alabama and works in English. International clients are not accepted. Therapy options include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging.
Costs vary by location and use a subscription model that can be canceled at any time. To begin, select the Start Therapy button, complete the short matching questionnaire, and schedule according to therapist availability.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Somatic-informed work helps people become aware of body sensations tied to stress, trauma, or anxiety and learn simple ways to release tension or interrupt unhelpful patterns. This can be useful for symptoms like chronic tension, sleep disruption, or overwhelming anxiety.Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on clarifying values and taking small actions that match those values. It teaches practical steps to live with difficult thoughts while moving toward a meaningful life. Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes a respectful, nonjudgmental relationship where the therapist listens closely and follows the person's pace and priorities.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the client about needs, goals, and preferences and recommend methods that fit. Over time they may combine somatic noticing with ACT or CBT skills to address thoughts, feelings, and behaviors together.
Online therapy makes these approaches accessible through video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video sessions allow real-time conversation and visual cues, while messaging and chat give flexible check-ins and practice between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy lives and keep continuity when in-person meetings are difficult.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 16 years
- Licensed
- Alabama, Tennessee
- Languages
- English