About Mary
Mary McLaggan is a licensed counselor who focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, and life changes. She brings two decades of clinical experience and speaks both English and Spanish. Her approach is respectful and warm, and she aims to meet people where they are.
She uses straightforward conversation to understand what matters most to each person. Sessions are shaped around practical steps for daily life, like sleep routines, coping skills for anxiety, or tools for handling grief.
Background and approach
Mary tailors the pace and focus to fit individual needs rather than following a one-size-fits-all plan. Mary draws on several therapy styles to guide her work. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people spot unhelpful thoughts and try different behaviors.
Attachment-based ideas look at how early relationships affect trust and intimacy now. Dialectical skills can be used to manage strong emotions and improve communication. She has worked in counseling for 20 years and holds LPC and LMHC credentials, with licensure tied to Texas and Iowa as noted.
That background informs how she structures sessions and plans progress with clients. Her experience includes a wide range of concerns, from parenting stress to bipolar and trauma-related issues. People who choose her can expect a collaborative process.
The focus is on clear goals, small steps, and real-world strategies. Mary tries to make sessions useful from the first meeting onward.
How her approaches translate to online therapy
Mary uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice unhelpful thoughts and test new behaviors. CBT often focuses on solving current problems like anxiety, low mood, and sleep issues with clear exercises and short-term goals.She also uses Attachment-Based Therapy to look at patterns in relationships and how they affect trust and intimacy. This approach helps people understand emotional reactions and try different ways of connecting with others. Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills are sometimes taught to manage intense emotions and improve communication in daily life.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist and client discuss goals, try methods, and adjust the plan together. Mary will help pick which techniques fit a person's needs and preferences and change course as progress is made.
Online therapy allows the same practical work from different formats. Video calls let visual cues guide conversations and role plays. Phone sessions can be a good option when bandwidth is low or a quieter connection is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging support shorter check-ins, skill reminders, and ongoing tracking between sessions, making it easier to use therapy tools in real time.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Texas, Iowa
- Languages
- English, Spanish