Deborah Gleason
Trauma-informed therapist focusing on lived experience
- Credentials
- LICSW, LCSW
- Experience
- 9 years
- Licensed in
- Alabama, Illinois
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Deborah
Deborah Gleason is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker with a warm, down-to-earth style. She supports people coping with anxiety, trauma, relationship strain, identity questions, and major life changes. Deborah uses plain language and a calm approach to help clients feel understood and steady in difficult moments.
She emphasizes paying attention to how the body holds experience as well as the stories people tell about themselves. Sessions may include traditional talk therapy alongside breath work, grounding, and simple body-based awareness to help manage strong emotions.
Background and approach
Deborah invites curiosity about patterns and beliefs that get in the way of feeling well. Her work is collaborative and nonjudgmental. She meets clients where they are and helps them try practical tools for everyday life, such as mindfulness practices and steps to regulate the nervous system.
This includes attention to self-esteem, grief, parenting stresses, and coping during transitions. Deborah has nine years of clinical experience and holds LICSW and LCSW credentials. She has supported people with a wide range of concerns, including addiction, bipolar symptoms, sleep and eating issues, and ADHD, and she has experience in settings that include adolescent residential care.
She also recognizes the role of spiritual and inner resources in healing. The aim is to help clients reconnect with internal wisdom, gain clearer choices, and move forward with more confidence and ease.
Approaches that combine mind and body for everyday relief
Deborah draws from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Client-Centered Therapy in ways that are easy to follow. ACT focuses on clarifying personal values and taking steps that matter, even when difficult thoughts or feelings show up. Client-centered work prioritizes understanding the person’s experience and building a compassionate, nonjudgmental relationship to support change.She also uses elements of mindfulness to help people notice thoughts and sensations without getting pulled into them. Mindfulness practices can be useful for stress, anxiety, sleep problems, and managing emotional reactivity. Together these approaches help with coping during life transitions, relationship strain, parenting stress, and trauma-related symptoms.
Finding the right fit is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with the client to try approaches that match their goals, needs, and comfort level, and adjust methods over time. That partnership helps identify which tools feel most helpful for daily life.
The original biography does not list specific online session formats, so confirm options before booking. Online work can make therapy easier to fit into busy schedules, allow shorter check-ins on hectic days, reduce travel time, and let people practice skills in their usual routines. Licensed professionals can adapt mindfulness, ACT exercises, and grounding techniques to remote sessions so clients can use practical strategies between meetings.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Less about arguing with difficult thoughts, more about loosening their grip and acting on what matters to you anyway. Values and committed action carry the work, which suits conversation at a distance.
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.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 9 years
- Licensed
- Alabama, Illinois
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Deborah
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point