Joanna Smith
Calm, practical support for life and relationships
- Credentials
- LPC
- Experience
- 4 years
- Licensed in
- Arizona
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Joanna
Joanna Smith is a licensed professional counselor (LPC) based in Arizona who focuses on helping people with stress, anxiety, relationships, and life changes. She provides a welcoming, affirming space for LGBT clients and for people exploring identity, sexuality, and intimacy. Her practice is practical and down-to-earth, aimed at helping clients feel steadier day to day.
Joanna uses approaches that help people notice what matters and take small, manageable steps toward change.
Background and approach
She blends work on communication, self-esteem, and setting boundaries with strategies to reduce overwhelm. Sessions are conversational and goal-oriented, with an emphasis on skills people can apply between meetings. She also supports those dealing with trauma, addictions, grief, and career stress.
Joanna incorporates trauma-informed tools to help process painful memories and to build resilience. She pays attention to patterns that come from family of origin, attachment issues, and past relationships. Her background includes four years of clinical experience as an LPC.
That time has involved working with people facing compulsive behaviors, codependency, and co-occurring concerns like depression or ADHD. Joanna keeps therapy straightforward, offering coaching-style guidance when clients want focused problem solving. People who choose her often want practical help and clear next steps.
Joanna partners with each person to set realistic goals and to track progress. She supports both short-term coping and longer-term personal growth.
Therapeutic approaches that translate well online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people clarify their values and take small steps toward them even when feelings are hard. It emphasizes noticing thoughts and choosing actions that line up with what matters, which can help with anxiety, stress, and life transitions.Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationships shape current patterns. In sessions she helps clients identify those patterns and try new ways of connecting and communicating, which is useful for intimacy issues and relationship struggles.
Joanna treats finding the right approach as a team effort. She will talk with each person about symptoms, goals, and preferences and then suggest methods to try. If something isn’t a good fit, she adjusts the plan so it better matches what the person needs.
Online work here uses video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to offer flexible care. Those options make it easier to fit sessions around work, family, and school. Many clients find that being able to choose a format helps them stay consistent and apply skills 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.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Looks at how early bonds shaped what you expect from closeness, and how that plays out now with a partner, a parent, or your own children.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
Attends to the emotions underneath a recurring argument or distance, and to the attachment needs driving them. Often used where a relationship keeps returning to the same painful loop.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Career difficulties
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 4 years
- Licensed
- Arizona
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Joanna
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point