Wendi Cancilla, LMHC

Wendi Cancilla is a licensed mental health counselor with 24 years of experience helping people cope with stress, anxiety, trauma, and life transitions. She focuses on practical tools that reduce symptoms and improve day-to-day functioning. Wendi aims to make therapy approachable and useful from the first session.

Her work often centers on trauma and abuse, grief, addiction, and parenting concerns. She also supports people dealing with sleep problems, low self-esteem, anger, and compassion fatigue. Wendi pays attention to how health issues, caregiving, and past family experiences shape current struggles.

Wendi uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people spot unhelpful thinking and test new behaviors. She also draws on Motivational Interviewing to boost readiness for change and Solution-Focused Therapy to set concrete short-term goals. When trauma is central, she incorporates Trauma-Focused Therapy to address those specific wounds.

Sessions tend to mix skill teaching with problem-solving and emotional processing. Wendi emphasizes small, manageable steps and checks in about what is or isn't working. Her style is direct but warm, aiming to help people build clearer routines and steadier moods.

Wendi has worked with adults affected by chronic illness, caregiving stress, adoption and foster care issues, and other complex histories. She practices in Washington and holds LMHC credentialing in both Florida and Washington. She conducts sessions in English and offers several online formats to fit different schedules.

Practical approaches for online healing

Wendi commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Motivational Interviewing in online sessions. CBT helps people identify unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviors to reduce anxiety or low mood. Motivational Interviewing helps when someone feels stuck about making changes by building motivation and small next steps.

She treats the choice of approach as a collaborative process. The therapist and client review concerns, goals, and preferences together and then try methods that fit those priorities. Adjustments are made as progress and feedback indicate what is most helpful.

Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to make care more flexible. Video calls work well for deeper conversations and skill demonstrations. Phone sessions are useful when video is impractical or bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging can support brief check-ins, tracking progress, or continuing work between longer sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy schedules and different daily routines.