About Deana
Deana Porter is a licensed marriage and family therapist who uses straightforward, practical methods to help people make changes that matter. She brings 29 years of experience and focuses on improving relationships, recovering from trauma, and handling intimacy and self-esteem concerns.
Background and approach
Her style is warm and direct, aimed at making therapy feel useful from the start. She draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to identify unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviors.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy is used to teach skills for managing intense emotions and reducing impulsive reactions. The Gottman Method informs her work on communication and connection in close relationships.
Deana adapts conversations and plans to fit each person’s situation. Sessions concentrate on clear goals, small practical steps, and skills people can use between meetings.
She aims to make therapy understandable and tied to daily life. Many people come for help with anxiety, depression, grief, stress, or career strain.
Others seek support for parenting stress, blended family challenges, attachment questions, or recovery after domestic violence. She also works with issues such as eating or sleeping problems and compassion fatigue.
Deana practices in California and conducts work in English. She invites people who are ready to try a different approach to their problems to take a first step and see what feels helpful.
Therapeutic approaches for online relationship and trauma work
Deana often combines Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the Gottman Method when working online. CBT helps people identify thought patterns that increase stress or sadness and then practice new ways of thinking and acting. The Gottman Method focuses on improving communication and resolving common relationship conflicts through structured exercises and conversation techniques.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals and preferences and then recommend starting points. Together they track what helps and adjust the plan as needed to fit changing needs and life demands.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video calls are useful for more in-depth conversations and skill practice. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a client prefers not to be on camera. Live chat and text messaging allow shorter check-ins, ongoing skills reminders, or support between longer sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy week and to keep working on goals from different settings.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Narcissism
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 29 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English