Ashley Barkley, LPC

Ashley Barkley is a Licensed Professional Counselor who focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, grief, and relationship challenges. She brings a calm, practical style to sessions and aims to make therapy straightforward and useful for busy parents and adults. Ashley practices from a place of experience and steady support. She began her counseling career after earning a psychology degree and a master’s in education with an emphasis in community counseling from the University of Oklahoma. Over 13 years she has worked in settings that include child welfare and schools, giving her direct experience with adoption and foster care issues and with young people navigating school life. Early work involved reunification efforts for children who had been in foster care, and that led to familiarity with court processes and parenting pressures. Later roles in schools deepened her understanding of group dynamics and the social hurdles children and teens face. These experiences shaped her focus on practical skills for families and parents under strain. In sessions she draws on several therapy styles to match what a person needs in the moment. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is part of her approach, along with client-centered listening, solution-focused planning, psychodynamic thinking, and trauma-focused strategies when past hurt is central. She describes her style as holistic, looking at physical, emotional, social, and spiritual factors. Ashley works with people facing a wide range of concerns including ADHD, self-harm, communication problems, anger, self-esteem, depression, and life changes. Her background in schools and child welfare informs how she talks with parents and young adults about real-world challenges.

Therapy approaches and how online sessions help

Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and building a collaborative relationship. The therapist follows the person’s lead, reflects what they’re saying, and helps them find their own solutions to daily struggles. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, often called CBT, looks at how thoughts and behaviors interact. It uses concrete strategies and short exercises to reduce anxiety, manage mood, and change unhelpful habits. Trauma-focused therapy concentrates on processing past hurts and reducing their hold on current life. It combines safety building with skills to manage strong emotions and memories. Finding the right mix of these approaches is part of the work. The therapist will talk with the client about goals and preferences and adapt methods together over time. That collaborative process helps target what matters most to the person. Online sessions can be scheduled as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is useful for face-to-face conversation, phone works well when bandwidth is low, live chat allows short check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into school, work, or caregiving routines while keeping focus on consistent progress.