Shari Lightfield, LPC

Shari Lightfield is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) who brings a compassionate, strengths-focused approach to therapy. She has worked with individuals, groups, and families in both residential and outpatient community mental health settings, offering practical support across a wide range of concerns including trauma, family issues, addiction, mood disorders, and relationship difficulties.

Shari centers her work on a positive, person-centered foundation, helping clients draw on existing strengths while building new skills. She integrates techniques from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Trauma-Focused CBT, mindfulness-informed practices, existential and eco-psychology perspectives, Positive Psychology, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). This mix allows her to tailor sessions to each person - sometimes using non-traditional tools or activities when they better fit a client’s needs and goals.

Shari emphasizes the importance of the therapeutic relationship as a distinct and healing connection that requires authenticity, clear communication, mutual trust, commitment, and respect. She acknowledges that beginning therapy can feel daunting and honors the courage it takes to start, supporting clients as they navigate change, healing, and personal growth.

Therapeutic Approaches and Online Care with Shari Lightfield

Shari draws from several evidence-informed approaches to meet different needs. Client-Centered Therapy focuses on empathic listening and collaboration, creating space for clients to explore values, identity, and relationships while building self-understanding and resilience. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps identify unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns and teaches concrete skills for managing anxiety, depression, stress, and compulsive tendencies. EMDR is used when past distressing memories continue to affect current functioning; through structured processing, it can reduce the intensity of traumatic memories and help restore adaptive coping.

Choosing the right approach is part of the therapeutic process. Shari works collaboratively with clients to assess needs, goals, and personal preferences and then tailors techniques accordingly, adjusting methods as trust and insight grow.

Online therapy offers practical flexibility - sessions can take place by video call, by phone, or through live chat and text-based messaging depending on what fits a client’s schedule and comfort. These options make it easier to maintain consistent care, access support during life transitions, and integrate therapeutic tools into everyday routines while working with licensed professionals and therapists.