Maria Clara Salazar-Pretto
Calm, practical therapy for everyday struggles
- Credentials
- LCSW
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed in
- Florida
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Format
- Online sessions
About Maria
Maria Clara Salazar-Pretto is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people manage stress, anxiety, depression, grief, parenting concerns, ADHD and related life changes. She speaks English and Spanish and brings twenty years of experience to each conversation. Her style is straightforward and warm, aimed at making practical steps feel doable for busy lives.
She uses a client-centered approach that focuses on each person's goals. Sessions often begin by identifying one or two clear priorities to work on.
Background and approach
From there she mixes cognitive behavioral tools to change unhelpful thinking and solution-focused strategies to build doable habits. Maria Clara’s background includes work in hospitals, health centers, and personal agencies. She earned a master’s degree in social work from California State University, Fresno and has an undergraduate major in clinical psychology.
Those settings shaped a practical, hands-on way of working that many people find easy to follow. In sessions she relies on empathy, active listening, and reflection to help people feel heard. Clients learn concrete skills for regulating emotions, improving communication, and managing day-to-day stressors.
Therapy is framed as a collaborative process where small changes add up over time. She accepts international clients and offers multiple online formats. Her Florida license is FL LCSW SW7853 and she combines clinical training with bilingual cultural experience to support people who prefer English or Spanish.
Practical therapy approaches for online care
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening closely and shaping goals around what matters most to the person. It helps when someone needs a supportive place to sort priorities and make decisions.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and behavior. It offers simple exercises to reduce anxiety, improve mood, and change unhelpful habits. Solution-Focused Therapy zeroes in on small, concrete changes that move a person toward their goals and feel achievable in everyday life.
Maria Clara treats finding the right approach as a shared process. She will talk about options and tailor techniques to a client’s needs, goals, and comfort level. That way the plan reflects what actually fits the person rather than a fixed method.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. These formats let people fit sessions around work, school, caregiving, and travel. For many, remote sessions make it easier to keep continuity, try new skills between appointments, and get steady support without extra commute time.
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 issues does she commonly address?
What is her general approach in sessions?
How much experience does she have?
What are her credentials and where is she located?
Which languages are supported for sessions?
What session formats are available?
How are sessions priced?
How do I begin working with her?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English, Spanish
Next step
Talk to Maria
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point