About LaDonna
LaDonna Barner helps people who are feeling stuck in relationships, parenting challenges, or major life shifts. She offers a calm, nonjudgmental space where clients can say what they feel and name what they want to change.
Background and approach
Her approach is warm and straightforward, aimed at practical steps as well as emotional understanding. Barner draws on six years of clinical experience as a licensed marriage and family therapist, LMFT, practicing in Mississippi.
She listens first to understand each person’s story, then works with them to set clear, achievable goals. Sessions focus on small shifts clients can try between meetings.
Her work often addresses stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and trauma and abuse. She also supports people managing mood conditions such as bipolar, attention differences like ADHD, and difficulties with eating or body image.
Communication problems, commitment worries, and intimacy-related concerns are common topics in her practice. LaDonna uses several practical methods in session.
She favors client-centered conversations that follow the client’s lead, cognitive behavioral tools to change unhelpful patterns, and emotionally-focused techniques for relationship and intimacy issues. She may also draw on existential ideas when clients face big life questions.
People who choose her can expect a focused, collaborative process. Barner helps clients explore options, practice new skills, and track small gains over time.
She encourages honest talk and steady progress rather than quick fixes.
Using practical approaches through online therapy
Client-centered therapy focuses on following the client’s lead, offering space to talk and be heard while the therapist reflects what matters most. This approach helps people build self-understanding and confidence before trying new behaviors.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions, and teaches concrete skills to change unhelpful patterns. It is useful for anxiety, depression, stress, and challenges with motivation or self-esteem.
Emotionally-focused therapy helps people identify and shift emotional patterns that affect close relationships and intimacy. It is often used when communication and connection feel stuck.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals and preferences, then recommend or combine methods that fit those needs. This is a collaborative process where adjustments are made as progress unfolds.
Online sessions can be scheduled as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is helpful for deeper conversational work, phone calls are useful when bandwidth is limited, live chat can allow quick check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives and keep momentum between sessions.
Frequently asked questions
What concerns does she commonly address?
What is her overall approach in sessions?
How much clinical experience does she have?
What credential does she hold and where is she based?
Which languages are supported for sessions?
Can people outside the U.S. meet with her?
What session formats are available online?
How does payment and getting started work?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Parenting issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 6 years
- Licensed
- Mississippi
- Languages
- English