About Andrea
Dr. Andrea Shirley welcomes people who are feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or unsure how to move forward.
Background and approach
She focuses on practical steps to reduce stress and anxiety and to improve self-worth and close relationships. She works with issues like grief, trauma, intimacy concerns, career changes, and compassion fatigue.
Dr. Shirley is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) practicing in California.
She believes each person knows their own story and brings strengths into therapy. Sessions start by listening closely to what matters most and identifying small, manageable changes.
The work often includes clarifying values, improving communication, and building coping skills for stronger day-to-day functioning. Her approach draws on client-centered methods to honor the person in front of her and narrative techniques to help reframe painful or stuck stories.
Solution-focused strategies are used to set achievable goals and notice quick shifts. Trauma-focused work is available when past events are getting in the way of living today.
Over 27 years of professional experience inform a calm and steady style. Dr.
Shirley aims to make sessions straightforward and useful, with clear steps a person can try between meetings. She supports clients through transitions such as divorce, adoption and foster care concerns, chronic illness, and caregiving stress.
Sessions are offered in English and conducted online by video, phone, live chat, or text messaging. People are invited to start by describing what they most want to change and exploring a plan that fits their life.
How approaches translate to online work
Client-centered therapy prioritizes the person's experience and values. In practice this means sessions start with listening and follow the person's lead to identify what feels most important and what small changes might help. Narrative therapy focuses on the stories people tell about themselves and their relationships. Online sessions can be used to examine those stories, try new ways of describing challenges, and test different responses in daily life. Solution-focused therapy zeroes in on concrete goals and practical steps. It often produces quick strategies and experiments that people can try between meetings to notice change.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will ask about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn't helped before. Together the person and therapist will choose or blend methods that fit the issue and personal style, and they will adjust the plan as progress is made.
Online therapy offers flexibility and practical advantages. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation when a longer, focused session is helpful. Phone sessions work when bandwidth is limited or a quieter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging suit brief updates, coaching-style support, or moments when writing feels easier than speaking. These options make it simpler to fit therapy into a busy life and to keep momentum between sessions.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 27 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English