About Heidi
Heidi Summers greets people with a calm, steady presence. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who brings 26 years of clinical experience to sessions.
Background and approach
She listens carefully and helps clients find practical ways to cope with stress, anxiety, mood changes, and grief. Her work is straightforward and down to earth.
Heidi draws on client-centered methods to make people feel heard and respected. She uses cognitive behavioral techniques to help spot unhelpful thinking and solution-focused tools to set clear goals and small steps forward.
Heidi has spent many years supporting adults facing trauma, relationship strain, parenting pressures, and major life transitions. Her background includes both individual and group work with people who have experienced loss, domestic violence, or sexual trauma, as well as those managing depression, bipolar mood challenges, or ADHD-related difficulties.
Sessions tend to focus on what the person most needs right now. That might be learning skills to manage anxiety, talking through grief, improving communication, or creating a plan for life changes and career shifts.
Heidi aims to make each meeting practical and usable between appointments. She offers flexible formats to fit various routines, including video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text messaging.
Heidi practices in California and conducts therapy in English.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Client-centered therapy focuses on making space for the person's experience. The therapist listens deeply, reflects what she hears, and helps clients clarify their own goals and priorities. This approach is useful for people who need support to feel understood and make decisions.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions. It teaches practical techniques to challenge unhelpful thoughts and build new habits that reduce anxiety or improve mood. CBT is often chosen for worries, depression, and stress management.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. Heidi will collaborate with each person to decide which methods fit their needs, goals, and comfort level. That might mean blending approaches or trying one method for a few sessions to see how it helps.
Online therapy offers several practical benefits. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation when seeing nonverbal cues matters. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is low or when someone prefers not to be on camera. Live chat and text-based messaging are helpful for quick check-ins, brief coaching, or ongoing support between appointments. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy days and different routines.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 26 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English