Crista Shaw, LCPC

Crista Shaw is a licensed clinical professional counselor with 15 years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, trauma, and anger. She aims to make the first steps into therapy feel simple and doable. Her approach is calm and direct, focused on practical ways to feel better in day-to-day life.

She uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help clients notice and change unhelpful thoughts and actions. She also draws on client-centered methods to offer a warm, nonjudgmental space for people to speak freely. For those coping with intense emotions or repeated relationship patterns, Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills and trauma-focused strategies are available.

Crista works with many concerns related to mood, grief, and life change. She also supports people dealing with parenting strain, adoption and foster care questions, blended family issues, and sexual identity matters. She pays attention to overlapping problems like ADHD, impulsivity, isolation, and co-morbid mood disorders.

In sessions she favors clear, doable steps over jargon. Clients can expect short-term tools they can practice between meetings and longer-term work to shift patterns that keep coming back. Conversations are paced to each person’s readiness and priorities.

Her practice is based in Maine and conducted in English. She encourages people to take the small next step of reaching out when they are ready to explore change and relief.

How CBT and Skills Work Online

Client-Centered Therapy is about listening and building a respectful connection; it gives people space to share what matters and guides the pace of each session. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing different behaviors to reduce anxiety and low mood, which can be taught in step-by-step exercises during online meetings.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy adds practical emotion regulation and interpersonal skills for people who struggle with intense feelings or repeated reactions. These approaches are useful for stress, mood disorders, trauma reactions, and problems with impulsivity or relationships. Crista will work collaboratively to find which methods fit a person’s goals and daily life, discussing options and adjusting the plan as progress is made.

Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to increase flexibility. Video calls let people use visual cues and longer conversations. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or a person prefers not to be on camera. Live chat or text messaging supports brief check-ins and practice of new skills between longer appointments. Together these formats help therapy fit into work, parenting, or school schedules while keeping the focus on practical changes and skill building.