Marisela Cuellar-VanHouten
Warm support for parenting and emotional health
- Credentials
- LMSW
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed in
- Michigan
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Marisela
Marisela Cuellar-VanHouten is a licensed social worker in Michigan who focuses on parenting and family-related concerns alongside mood and stress issues. She uses a compassionate, respectful manner to talk through trauma and abuse, depression, bipolar symptoms, anxiety, and parenting challenges. Marisela aims to tailor conversations and plans to each person's situation.
She is an LGBTQ ally and pays attention to cultural background when it matters to treatment. Marisela works from a practical stance.
Background and approach
Sessions often include learning simple skills to manage strong feelings and practicing new ways to handle stressful situations. She draws on methods that teach present-moment awareness, flexible thinking, and clearer communication. These tools can help with grief, anger, sleep problems, low self-esteem, and the everyday pressures of caregiving.
She has spent a decade providing individual therapy. Marisela blends talk-based work with hands-on exercises from cognitive behavioral and mindfulness approaches. People can expect a steady, supportive tone and a focus on small, achievable steps toward change.
The approach also addresses relationship strain, intimacy concerns, and challenges related to ADHD, career decisions, and compassion fatigue. Marisela is open about customizing pace and focus so sessions match each person’s goals. Her license is LMSW, which stands for Licensed Master Social Worker.
Marisela offers multiple ways to meet, including video calls, phone, live chat, and text messaging to fit different schedules and needs.
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on noticing thoughts and values and then taking committed steps toward living a meaningful life. It can help with stress, anxiety, and choices around parenting and relationships. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT, looks at unhelpful thinking patterns and teaches practical skills to change those patterns and behaviors, which often helps with depression, sleep issues, and low self-esteem. Mindfulness Therapy teaches simple attention and breathing skills to reduce reactivity and improve emotional balance in daily life.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Marisela collaborates with each person to decide which methods fit best. She will adjust techniques based on goals, comfort level, and what shows benefit over time.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to connect. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation, phone sessions suit people on the go, and live chat or text messaging can support shorter check-ins or skill practice between meetings. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around school, work, and family life while using the approaches described above.
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.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Trauma and abuse
- Parenting issues
- Bipolar disorder
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Michigan
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Marisela
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point