Elizabeth Martinez

Elizabeth Martinez is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in Illinois with 11 years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, depression, and major life changes. She offers straightforward, practical support for people who feel stuck or uncertain about what comes next.

Her sessions focus on talking through current difficulties and building skills to cope better day to day. She uses approaches that include acceptance and commitment strategies, cognitive behavioral techniques, mindfulness, dialectical behavior skills, narrative methods, and motivational interviewing to help clients notice patterns and try new responses.

Elizabeth aims to make sessions clear and conversational. She encourages clients to name what matters to them and to test small changes between meetings. Meetings tend to center on concrete tools, behavior experiments, and reflecting on what felt helpful or hard.

She works with concerns such as abandonment, attachment difficulties, communication and commitment issues, caregiving stress, grief around divorce or separation, guilt and shame, dissociation, and the emotional aftermath of disasters. She also supports people facing aging and geriatric issues, co-morbidity, and personality-related challenges like avoidant or antisocial patterns.

Elizabeth practices in Illinois and conducts sessions in English. To begin, people complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule an initial session to see if the approach fits their needs.

How Elizabeth uses therapeutic methods online

Elizabeth frequently draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help clients in practical ways. ACT focuses on clarifying values and committing to small actions that align with what matters, useful for people unsure of next steps. CBT looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and provides tools to test unhelpful thinking and build new habits.

She also uses elements of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and mindfulness to teach skills for emotion regulation and staying present when stress feels overwhelming. These approaches are aimed at improving day-to-day coping rather than promising a fixed outcome. Together, the therapist and client decide which methods suit current goals and try them out in sessions and between meetings.

The therapist context does not list specific online session formats. Confirm the available session types before booking so they fit your schedule. Online work can make it easier to fit appointments into busy weeks, cut travel time, and use shorter check-ins when needed. The therapist will collaborate with clients to shape session length and focus so the work fits into everyday life and practical routines.