Connie St. James, LMFT

Connie St. James draws on a long history of education, training, and life experience to support people facing stress, anxiety, relationship concerns, career decisions, grief, or the challenges of aging. She holds a Master of Marriage, Family and Child Therapy and completed a 3000-hour internship that included work in a psychiatric hospital, a substance use treatment center, and a facility for abused children. After passing the state written and oral examinations, she received her license from the State of California as a Marriage and Family Therapist in 1992.

Her clinical foundation was built in a variety of settings, from a small private practice in West Los Angeles to group work focused on major depression in a Palm Desert hospital. Life changes led her to step away from active counseling for a time while she supported family and pursued other work, including many years in real estate. Throughout those years she continued to apply therapeutic skills to her own relationships and life transitions. Now in her later life stage, she has chosen to return to counseling and bring more than 60 years of personal life experience together with her formal training to help others.

Connie practices as an LMFT, which stands for Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a credential indicating specialized graduate training and state licensure to provide psychotherapy. Her approach blends person-centered, cognitive, and behavioral methods. She is patient, empathic, and nonjudgmental. In sessions she helps clients tell and clarify their story - the parts that bring joy and the parts that bring pain - and then works collaboratively to identify feelings, patterns of thought, and behaviors that may be contributing to dissatisfaction. Clients set goals and decide when to change or conclude therapy, while Connie tailors the work to meet individual needs and circumstances.

Approaches for online support with relationships and life transitions

Connie uses person-centered and cognitive-behavioral approaches in her practice. Person-centered therapy focuses on listening with empathy and helping clients explore their feelings and values so they can clarify what matters most and build self-understanding. Cognitive-behavioral techniques look at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interact, offering practical tools to reduce anxiety, improve mood, and change unhelpful patterns.

Finding the right approach is part of the therapeutic process. Connie works collaboratively with clients to identify their goals, preferences, and the issues they want to address, and she adjusts methods over time so the work matches each person’s needs. This collaborative process helps ensure that therapy feels relevant and manageable.

Online therapy offers flexibility in how clients connect - through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging - making it easier to fit sessions into busy schedules or to receive support from home. These options can increase access to licensed professionals and allow therapy to continue across life transitions, while maintaining a consistent therapeutic relationship with a trusted therapist.