About Diana
Diana Elstad is a licensed mental health counselor with 35 years of experience helping people facing addiction, depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship strain, and grief. She works with concerns that include sleep and eating problems, parenting stress, anger, low self-esteem, and career challenges. She also supports people coping with bipolar symptoms and intimacy-related issues.
Elstad listens closely and aims to create a calm, respectful space to talk through what matters most.
Background and approach
Her style is warm and direct. She pays attention to what is said and to the feelings underneath the words. She draws on several practical approaches, including client-centered work, cognitive behavioral techniques, and skills from dialectical behavior therapy.
She uses those tools alongside motivational interviewing and narrative ideas to match strategies to each person’s needs. Sessions focus on clear steps people can try between meetings. Her background includes work in community clinics, treatment centers, hospitals, and independent practice across Washington.
That variety shaped a flexible approach to common problems like addiction and codependency, aging and caregiver stress, attachment and abandonment concerns, and trauma-related symptoms. People who choose Elstad can expect conversational sessions that blend active listening with concrete strategies. She helps clients name patterns, practice new skills, and set realistic goals.
The aim is to make life more manageable one step at a time.
How Diana’s Approaches Work Online
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening, empathy, and following the client’s lead. It helps people who need time and space to sort out feelings and priorities without feeling judged.Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts affect feelings and behavior. It teaches practical ways to test unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviors, which can help with anxiety, depression, sleep, and eating problems.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) offers skills for managing intense emotions, improving relationships, and reducing self-destructive patterns. It is useful for stress, anger, and mood regulation issues.
Choosing a method is a team effort. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, try approaches, and adjust based on what feels most helpful. That collaborative process helps pick techniques that fit the client’s needs and preferences.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video is useful for a fuller conversation and visual cues, phone can be easier when bandwidth is limited, and messaging formats work well for short check-ins or ongoing support between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy schedules and life demands.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed
- Washington
- Languages
- English