Mary Downer
Practical, steady support for stressful times
- Credentials
- LISW
- Experience
- 17 years
- Licensed in
- Ohio
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Mary
Mary Downer is a Licensed Independent Social Worker who brings 17 years of clinical experience to her practice. She focuses on practical, straightforward care for people feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief, trauma, mood struggles, or life transitions. Mary speaks plainly, listens carefully, and helps clients break big problems into manageable steps.
She uses approaches that target thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so clients can try small changes that add up.
Background and approach
Sessions are conversational and goal-oriented, centered on what each person wants to address. Mary emphasizes strengths and steady progress over perfection. Her background includes work with a wide range of concerns such as depression, panic, obsessive thoughts, ADHD, trauma and abuse, and compassion fatigue.
She also has experience with issues tied to pregnancy and childbirth, isolation, communication difficulties, and life purpose. That varied experience informs a flexible way of planning treatment. Mary creates an open-minded, nonjudgmental space where people can name what’s hard and plan next steps.
She sees the person as the expert on their own life and partners with them to try realistic strategies. The goal is to reduce what’s getting in the way and build skills for handling future stressors. Sessions can include teaching practical tools, practicing new responses, and reviewing progress together.
Mary helps clients move forward at a pace that feels doable, focusing on concrete change and everyday improvements.
Online approaches that focus on skills and healing
Mary offers Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions link together and teaches practical strategies to change unhelpful patterns. CBT is useful for anxiety, depression, panic, obsessive thoughts, and many everyday challenges because it emphasizes clear skills and practice.She also uses Trauma-Focused Therapy, which helps people safely work through the impact of traumatic events and reduce distressing reactions. This approach combines emotional support with techniques to process difficult memories and build coping skills for post-traumatic stress and related symptoms.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Mary collaborates with each person to choose methods that fit their goals, needs, and comfort level. She adjusts plans over time based on what helps most, and she explains options in simple terms so decisions feel clear and practical.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make care more flexible. These formats let people schedule appointments around family and work, revisit materials between meetings, and use the communication style that matches their needs. The online setup aims to make it easier to use skills in daily life and keep momentum between sessions.
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.
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
What kinds of concerns does Mary address?
What is Mary’s general therapy style?
How much clinical experience does she have?
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In which languages are sessions offered?
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How does billing and getting started work?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Anger management
Also works with
- ADHD
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 17 years
- Licensed
- Ohio
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Mary
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point