About Maria
Maria Conforti is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with 16 years of experience across community settings and independent practice. She draws on work in group homes, nonprofit programs, incarceration settings, and integration programs to guide her approach. Maria communicates plainly and expects an honest effort from the people she sees.
She works with relationship issues, trauma and abuse, grief, coaching concerns, and ADHD-related challenges. Her practice emphasizes clear, practical steps rather than staying stuck in the past.
Background and approach
Maria combines Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) ideas and other methods to create a plan that fits each person. She often uses attachment-based thinking to help people see how childhood experiences shape current patterns. Sessions tend to be direct but compassionate.
Maria says she will not sugarcoat difficult truths, and she asks clients to be ready to try new behaviors between sessions. She also uses techniques from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) when emotion regulation is needed. She describes the goal of therapy as teaching skills people can use on their own.
That means building tools for better communication, handling conflict, and managing stress or symptoms linked to ADHD. Maria aims to help people make peace with past events so they can move forward toward chosen goals. Maria works collaboratively and expects commitment from both sides.
She speaks English and Italian and practices in Illinois. Her style suits people who want honest feedback, practical solutions, and steady support while they make changes.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) encourages noticing difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them and then choosing actions that match the client's values. It can help with motivation, avoidance, and living toward goals despite distractions.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing them with real-life experiments. This approach is useful for changing patterns in mood, behavior, and day-to-day problem solving.
Finding the right approach is treated as a collaboration. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t worked before. Together they will try strategies and adjust the plan over time to find what fits best.
Online sessions make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives. Video calls let people read facial cues and use shared worksheets. Phone sessions need less bandwidth and can be a simple way to check in. Live chat or text messaging supports shorter check-ins, quick coaching between sessions, or ongoing reflection when writing feels easier. These options give flexibility while working on the same ACT and CBT-based skills used in face-to-face work.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
- Grief
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Dependent personality
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult 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
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Narrative Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Experience
- 16 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English, Italian
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