About Shirley
Shirley Colee is a licensed mental health counselor in Florida with twenty years of experience. She helps people who are dealing with relationship strain, grief, trauma, anxiety, depression, and struggles with addiction. Many clients come for help with parenting stress, self-esteem, anger, and life transitions.
She offers a calm, respectful approach that focuses on the person in front of her. Shirley adapts conversations and plans to fit each person's situation.
Background and approach
She uses clear, practical strategies rather than jargon. Sessions focus on skills people can use between meetings and on understanding patterns that get in the way of better days. Her background includes a broad range of clinical work over two decades in Florida.
That experience has covered trauma and abuse, bipolar disorder, eating-related concerns, and compassion fatigue among caregivers. She brings that experience to help people sort out family-origin issues, codependency, and communication problems. Shirley draws from several familiar approaches when shaping treatment.
She uses client-centered work to build trust, cognitive-behavioral methods to address unhelpful thinking and behaviors, and elements of trauma-focused work when needed. She also uses strategies that teach emotion regulation and coping skills. People who want to start will find a straightforward process to begin therapy.
Sessions are offered by video, phone, live chat, or text messaging to fit different schedules and needs. Shirley supports international clients and conducts sessions in English.
How Shirley uses therapy approaches online
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and building trust. It helps people feel heard and safe to talk through difficult feelings and relationship problems. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches practical skills to change unhelpful patterns. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, emphasizes emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and improving communication skills for intense emotions and relationship conflicts.Finding the right approach is part of the work together. Shirley will talk with each person about goals and preferences and suggest techniques that fit those needs. That means sessions can mix approaches and change over time as progress and priorities shift.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and ongoing text-based messaging. Video calls are good for face-to-face conversation and skill practice. Phone sessions can work when bandwidth is limited or a quick check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging are useful for brief updates, coaching between sessions, or when typing feels easier than speaking. These options make therapy more flexible and easier to fit into a busy life.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Imago Relationship Therapy
- Jungian Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English