Marcia Howard

Marcia Howard is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) practicing in California. She brings two decades of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, relationship strain, and trauma. Marcia frames clients as the experts in their own lives and focuses on practical steps toward change.

She uses mindfulness-based work to help people notice patterns that keep them stuck and to build simple, present-moment skills. Marcia also draws on cognitive behavioral strategies to identify thoughts that worsen mood and on dialectical behavior techniques for emotion regulation and coping. Solution-focused ideas guide short-term goals and clear action steps.

In sessions she emphasizes small, concrete changes - breathing or attention practices, skill rehearsal, and short experiments between meetings. The work is collaborative: the person and therapist set priorities together and track progress over time. This approach is aimed at everyday problems like work stress, changes in family life, low self-esteem, and difficulties with eating or anger.

Marcia has experience addressing issues tied to aging and geriatric concerns, immigration, veterans and armed forces issues, and multicultural concerns among other focus areas. She also supports people navigating divorce, codependency, hospice and end-of-life challenges, and grief linked to chronic illness.

Sessions are offered in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. To begin, readers are asked to use the site’s Start Therapy button and complete a short matching questionnaire before scheduling according to therapist availability.

How mindfulness and practical therapy work online

Marcia blends mindfulness therapy with cognitive behavioral and dialectical behavior approaches to help people manage emotions and change habitual responses. Mindfulness practices teach simple attention and breathing skills to reduce reactivity and increase awareness. Cognitive behavioral work helps identify unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more helpful thinking. Dialectical behavior techniques focus on emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness for intense feelings.

Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will collaborate with each person to match techniques to their goals and daily life. Sessions may shift over time from learning skills to testing them in real situations while tracking progress together.

If you plan to try online therapy, confirm the specific session formats available before booking. This profile does not list particular formats, so check the platform options when scheduling. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy day, allow shorter check-ins when needed, and remove travel time so people can meet during a work break or between errands.