About Marilyn
Marilyn Bryan DeBernardo offers straightforward support for adults feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, addiction, grief, relationship strain, or big life changes. She is a New York Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) with 25 years of experience. She aims to help people find practical steps forward and regain a sense of control.
Marilyn focuses on common day-to-day problems like worry, low mood, trouble with intimacy, parenting strain, and challenges tied to substance use.
Background and approach
She also works with issues such as trauma and abuse, codependency, and managing symptoms of bipolar disorder or ADHD. Sessions center on clear goals and skills people can use between meetings. Her style blends proven approaches to match each person’s needs.
She uses techniques from cognitive behavioral work to spot unhelpful thinking, acceptance and commitment ideas to clarify values, and emotion-focused methods to deepen connection with feelings. Skills from dialectical behavior work may be used to manage strong emotions. People can expect a direct, person-focused conversation that looks at what’s happening now and what practical steps might help.
Marilyn aims to build a working relationship where clients feel heard and can try new coping tools. She also helps connect people to additional resources when needed. Marilyn works with adults in New York and with international clients in English.
She offers sessions that suit different schedules and communication preferences so therapy can fit into busy lives.
Therapeutic approaches for online care
Marilyn commonly draws on cognitive behavioral approaches and acceptance and commitment ideas to help people make changes that matter. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps identify unhelpful thoughts and patterns, and teaches practical skills to change behaviors and mood. Acceptance and commitment therapy focuses on clarifying personal values and taking small actions that align with those values even when difficult emotions are present.Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. Marilyn will talk with each person about their goals, symptoms, and preferences, then suggest a mix of techniques that fit. Together they set clear goals and check progress so methods can be adjusted over time.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video lets people work more like a traditional session, phone calls can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat suits short check-ins or when typing feels more comfortable, and messaging supports ongoing reflections between meetings. These options help therapy fit around work, caregiving, travel, or other commitments.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Motivational Interviewing
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- New York
- Languages
- English