About Shawn
Shawn Mcgivern is a licensed mental health counselor who uses collaborative, practical therapy to help people through hard moments. She brings 27 years of experience and a calm, straightforward style to conversations about stress, anxiety, relationships, grief, and identity concerns. Her work centers on helping people notice what matters, build clearer communication, and develop coping skills that fit everyday life.
Sessions tend to be goal-focused and conversational, with an emphasis on strengths and doable changes.
Background and approach
Shawn often helps people with sleep and eating concerns, low self-esteem, and work-related stress. Shawn also supports people dealing with trauma and its aftereffects, including dissociation and attachment issues. She offers ways to make emotional responses easier to understand and manage, and to rebuild trust in relationships and in oneself.
She can help with intimacy-related struggles, codependency, commitment worries, and challenges that follow divorce or separation. People find practical tools here for managing anger, procrastination, and perfectionism. Shawn uses techniques that help reshape thoughts and behaviors, and she teaches skills for regulating strong emotions and improving communication.
She also provides coaching-style guidance for career or life-transition decisions. Shawn practices in Massachusetts as an MA LMHC. Sessions are offered in English and designed to meet individual needs with attention to identity, life stage, and personal goals.
The focus is on clear steps people can try between sessions and steady progress over time.
Therapeutic approaches adapted for online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice what matters and take small actions toward those values while accepting difficult feelings. It can be useful for anxiety, depression, and motivation problems. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on identifying thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going and then practicing new, helpful responses; it often helps with anxiety, sleep, and low mood.Choosing the right approach is part of the work. Shawn will talk with each person about their goals and preferences and then recommend methods to try. That collaborative process means approaches can be mixed and adjusted as progress is made.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to increase flexibility. Video allows face-to-face conversation when that's helpful. Phone sessions can be a simpler option when bandwidth is limited or a quieter check-in is needed. Live chat and text are useful for brief check-ins, written reflection, or between-session coaching-style support.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Gottman Method
- Imago Relationship Therapy
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 27 years
- Licensed
- Massachusetts
- Languages
- English