David Shirly
Calm, practical support for emotional challenges
- Credentials
- LMHC
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed in
- Florida, New York
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About David
David Shirly is a licensed mental health counselor who uses a client-centered approach to guide people through stressful and painful times. He focuses on practical steps a person can take to reduce anxiety, manage mood, and address relationship or intimacy concerns. Sessions emphasize listening, clear goals, and skills that can be used between meetings.
He draws on cognitive behavioral therapy to help identify and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. Dialectical behavior therapy techniques are used when emotional regulation and distress tolerance are needed.
Background and approach
Mindfulness practices are introduced to calm the mind and improve focus. David has ten years of experience working with concerns such as stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, anger, trauma and abuse, sleeping problems, parenting issues, and ADHD. He also addresses related topics like attachment and abandonment, communication problems, body image, and codependency.
The work is practical and paced to what each person can manage. Sessions occur while keeping a clear plan in view. He helps people set concrete steps, track progress, and adjust strategies when something is not working.
The tone is straightforward, compassionate, and goal-oriented. David is licensed as a mental health counselor in Florida - LMHC. He offers services in English and accepts international clients.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging.
Therapeutic approaches suited for online work
Client-centered therapy focuses on understanding each person without judgment. It emphasizes listening, reflecting what matters to the person, and helping them find their own solutions, which works well in video or phone sessions.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, teaches practical tools to notice unhelpful thinking and change behaviors. It is useful for anxiety, depression, sleeping problems, and many everyday stresses and adapts cleanly to online formats with worksheets and between-session practice.
Dialectical behavior therapy, DBT, offers concrete skills for managing strong emotions and improving distress tolerance. Those skills can be taught and practiced through live sessions and reinforced with text or chat between meetings.
Choosing an approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the person about goals and preferences, try approaches that fit, and adjust plans based on what helps. That shared decision-making helps make online work feel useful and focused.
Online therapy brings flexibility. Video calls let people meet face-to-face from home. Phone sessions remove the need for video. Live chat and text-based messaging allow shorter check-ins and ongoing support between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life while still using the same therapeutic methods discussed above.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Concrete skills for riding out strong emotion, tolerating distress, and handling relationships without things escalating. The skills are practised in daily life, so between-session support by message or phone fits naturally.
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of problems can be addressed?
What is the general therapy style?
What is his professional background?
What are the licensure details and location?
Which languages are supported and can international clients join?
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Florida, New York
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to David
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point