About Marla
Marla Johnson is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) based in Florida with 25 years of clinical experience. She uses a client-centered, solution-focused approach to help people handle stress, anxiety, depression, and life transitions. Her style is direct and calm, and she aims to make therapy feel approachable and doable for busy parents and adults.
Marla listens first and tailors sessions to each person's needs. She helps people talk through painful experiences like trauma and abuse and practical struggles such as parenting, sleep problems, or addictive behaviors.
Background and approach
She also supports work on relationships, intimacy, self-esteem, and coping with mood shifts and ADHD-related challenges. Sessions often include clear, goal-oriented steps. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tools are used to spot unhelpful thinking and try small behavior changes.
Mindfulness techniques are offered to reduce stress and ground attention in the moment. Motivational interviewing helps when someone feels stuck or unsure how to start change. Her work also addresses deeper family-of-origin issues, grief, abandonment, and identity concerns related to LGBT experiences.
She adapts pace and focus to what each person needs, whether that is short-term problem solving or longer-term exploration. Marla keeps language simple and practical, focusing on actions people can try between sessions. She aims to create warmth and validation so clients feel heard and can practice new ways of coping and relating.
Practical approaches for online therapy and change
Client-centered work focuses on the person first. The therapist listens with warmth and follows the client’s pace, helping people name what matters and choose goals that feel right. This approach suits concerns like identity, relationship strain, and grief where feeling heard matters.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is used to identify unhelpful thoughts and try small behavior experiments. It is helpful for anxiety, depression, panic symptoms, sleep problems, and many everyday stressors because it gives clear steps to practice between sessions.
Mindfulness Therapy offers simple attention and grounding practices to reduce overwhelm and improve concentration. These techniques are useful for stress, anger, impulsivity, and managing mood swings or ADHD-related restlessness.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to pick methods that match their goals, needs, and comfort level. Plans can change over time as progress and priorities shift.
Online sessions can be done by video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to suit different routines. Video calls let people use face-to-face interaction when possible; phone sessions need less bandwidth and can fit into a short break; chat and messaging work well for quick check-ins or when typing feels easier. These options make it simpler to keep therapy consistent around work, school, or parenting.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Eating disorders
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English