Donna Welles, LICSW

Donna Welles is a licensed clinical social worker with 13 years of experience helping people navigate hard moments. She focuses on stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, and coping with life changes. Donna uses a direct, respectful style that centers each person's own goals and strengths.

She believes clients are the experts on their own stories. In sessions she listens closely, asks practical questions, and helps people notice what already works. The aim is to build skills and confidence so day-to-day life feels more manageable.

Donna draws on client-centered methods to keep the work focused on the person's priorities. She also uses elements of dialectical behavior therapy - DBT - to teach emotion regulation and coping skills. Mindfulness practices are offered to reduce rumination and improve attention in stressful moments.

Her background includes supporting people with mood disorders, trauma and abuse, panic attacks, and co-occurring concerns such as ADHD and substance of mood instability. Donna also works with issues like grief, intimacy-related difficulties, and traumatic brain injury when these come up in therapy.

Sessions are practical and collaborative. Donna helps people set short-term goals and build daily habits that support those goals. She emphasizes small changes that add up to steady improvement over time.

How Donna’s approaches translate to online work

Client-centered therapy focuses on the person's goals and perspective. In practice this means sessions start with what matters most to the person and shape the work around their priorities. It helps with low motivation, confidence, and making decisions during life transitions.

Dialectical behavior therapy - DBT - emphasizes concrete skills for managing intense emotions, tolerating distress, and improving interpersonal effectiveness. Those skills can be practiced between sessions and are useful for panic, mood swings, impulsivity, and relationship conflict.

Mindfulness therapy teaches simple attention and grounding exercises to reduce rumination and improve focus. These practices support sleep, anxiety, and coping after trauma or brain injury by bringing attention back to the present moment.

Finding the right approach is part of the process. The therapist will work collaboratively to choose or combine methods based on personal goals, needs, and preferences. Clients are invited to give feedback and adjust the plan as they go.

Session formats are not listed in the biography, so please confirm current options before booking. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy day, allow shorter check-ins when needed, and remove travel time. They also make it practical to practice skills in real-life settings and to apply new strategies between meetings.