Debra Pintel Steiner
Compassionate support for families and adults
- Credentials
- LCSW
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed in
- California
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Debra
Debra Pintel Steiner is a licensed clinical social worker who focuses on parenting and family concerns as well as adult mental health. She works with adults facing depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, and other life stresses. Debra aims to build a trusting space where people can talk about hard feelings and start to see things differently.
Debra spent part of her career as a social worker with Alameda County Child Protective Services.
Background and approach
In that role she provided family counseling to households involved in the child welfare system. She also has experience offering individual therapy to adults managing chronic physical health conditions along with mental health needs. In sessions she centers the person and listens without judgment.
That means conversations focus on what matters to the client and move at a comfortable pace. She uses practical listening, reflective questions, and gentle guidance to help people sort through problems and try new approaches. Debra draws on client-centered therapy, mindfulness, and trauma-focused work when those methods fit a person’s situation.
Mindfulness practices are used to calm the mind and improve focus. Trauma-focused techniques help process painful events when trauma is part of the story. She brings ten years of clinical experience and holds a license as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, LCSW.
Debra is based in California and conducts sessions in English. Families and parents looking for steady support may find her background especially relevant.
Therapeutic Approaches and Online Support
Client-centered therapy focuses on the person in front of the therapist. It means sessions are guided by the client’s needs, with the therapist providing attentive listening and reflection to help people clarify what matters. Mindfulness therapy teaches simple attention and breathing practices to reduce stress and improve focus, often helpful for anxiety, sleep issues, and coping with strong emotions.Trauma-focused therapy helps people safely address painful memories and their effects. When trauma is part of a person’s history, this approach supports processing those events and reducing their hold on daily life. The therapist will explain these options and discuss which methods feel like the best fit for the individual's situation.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Debra will work together with each person to match techniques to goals, preferences, and comfort level. That process can change as needs shift, and the plan will be reviewed openly in sessions.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into busy family schedules and to connect from home. They also allow for regular check-ins and different ways to communicate, so people can pick the format that fits their life and needs.
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.
Mindfulness Therapy
Attention training: noticing thoughts and physical feelings as they arrive without being carried off by them. Much of it is practice you do yourself, so guidance over video or audio works much as it would in person.
Trauma-Focused Therapy
Work that takes difficult past experience into account and moves at a pace you set, with attention to feeling steady before anything else. Being in your own space can make that easier for some people.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Trauma and abuse
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Debra
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point