Yolanda Fajardo-Vela, LPC, LPCC

Yolanda Fajardo-Vela is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor who uses clear, practical approaches to help people manage stress, anxiety, and depression. She focuses on building on strengths and setting realistic goals. Her style is straightforward and encouraging, aimed at helping people feel more capable as they work through difficult moments.

With 15 years of experience, she draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Client-Centered methods, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and mindfulness to shape sessions. She helps people notice unhelpful thoughts, practice different ways of responding, and build skills for day-to-day coping. Sessions include goal-setting and concrete exercises to practice between meetings.

She commonly supports people dealing with trauma and abuse, grief, attachment and abandonment concerns, and issues around guilt, shame, or forgiveness. She also addresses workplace stress, compassion fatigue, parenting strain, and relationship tensions. These topics are explored with practical tools and steady guidance rather than jargon.

Yolanda frames therapy as a collaborative process. She helps people find answers within themselves while offering structure and tools to move forward. Progress is paced to each person's needs and priorities.

People who choose her can expect a calm, direct approach that balances listening with skill-building. Sessions aim to increase confidence, reduce distressing symptoms, and support clearer decision-making for life changes.

Practical approaches for online therapy

Yolanda commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness-based work to help people change unhelpful thinking and build coping skills. CBT focuses on identifying thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going and practicing new, more helpful responses. Mindfulness therapy teaches simple attention and breathing practices to reduce reactivity and increase calm.

She also uses Client-Centered methods that emphasize listening and working at each person's pace. Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process - she will talk with clients about goals, preferences, and how each method fits their needs. Together they decide which strategies to try and adjust them over time.

Online therapy is offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to make work on goals more flexible. Video calls are useful for face-to-face conversation and teaching skills. Phone sessions can fit a quick check-in or when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging allow short exchanges, homework prompts, and ongoing support between longer sessions. These options help clients fit therapy into busy lives and keep momentum between appointments.