About Shakina
Shakina Small is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with 26 years of clinical practice. She focuses on relationship and family concerns, trauma and abuse, addictions, mood concerns such as bipolar, and ADHD. Her work is practical and direct, aimed at helping people make real changes in daily life.
She uses a client-centered stance that begins with listening and understanding each person's story. That foundation is paired with cognitive behavioral techniques to shape unhelpful thinking and behaviors.
Background and approach
Dialectical strategies help with intense emotions and relationship patterns. Shakina brings experience from many settings including schools, residential programs, foster care, inpatient and outpatient care, and faith communities. That background gives her a range of ways to approach problems like parenting strain, attachment struggles, abandonment and blended family conflicts.
Sessions are delivered in straightforward language and often include education and practical steps to try between meetings. She may assign small behavioral experiments, communication practice, or written exercises to test new patterns and track progress. People who turn to her often want to address trauma, rebuild trust, manage anger, reduce substance use, or cope with major life changes.
She aims to help clients identify root patterns and create habits that support healthier relationships and daily functioning.
How evidence-based approaches translate to online care
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening, empathy, and helping clients feel heard. It helps people clarify goals and find their own solutions by centering the conversation on their experience and priorities.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) targets the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions. In sessions clients learn practical skills to challenge unhelpful thoughts and try small behavioral changes that improve mood and daily functioning.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers tools for managing intense emotions and improving interpersonal effectiveness. Skills work can reduce reactivity, support better communication, and help stabilize relationships.
Choosing the right approach is collaborative. The therapist will discuss goals and preferences, try methods that fit the client, and adjust the plan based on what helps most. That teamwork helps identify whether one approach or a mix works better over time.
Online therapy with this clinician uses video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to offer flexibility. Video sessions allow face-to-face interaction for skills practice, phone calls can work when bandwidth is limited, live chat suits shorter check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, school, or family schedules while keeping momentum between sessions.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 26 years
- Licensed
- Pennsylvania
- Languages
- English
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