- Client-centered care
- Cognitive behavioral tools
- Motivational interviewing
About Estela
Estela Valera is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Pennsylvania with eight years of experience. She sees adults who are carrying heavy feelings about relationships, parenting, work, trauma, and identity. Estela also works with people dealing with guilt, shame, anxiety, depression, grief, and life transitions.
She keeps sessions conversational and interactive. Estela listens for how a person’s past and present connect, then helps name patterns that feel stuck. Sessions often include practical tools for managing intense emotions and straightforward ways to test new behaviors between meetings.
Her approach draws on client-centered therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, with tools from motivational interviewing. That means she focuses on what matters to the person, looks at unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, and helps people find their own reasons to change. Conversations aim to be direct and usable in daily life.
Estela has worked with people recovering from emotional or physical abuse and those trying to change long-standing family patterns. She also supports people facing career stress, parenting strain, caregiving burden, and issues tied to attachment and abandonment.
Sessions are offered in English and Spanish. Estela works with both practical problem-solving and emotional processing, helping people balance immediate coping strategies with longer-term shifts in how they relate to themselves and others.
How therapeutic approaches shape online work
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening, reflection, and following what matters most to the person. In practice this means sessions center the client’s concerns and priorities, and conversations aim to make difficult feelings easier to name and understand.Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) looks at the thoughts and behaviors that keep problems in place. Online CBT sessions often include short exercises, thought records, and behavioral experiments you can try between meetings to test what helps with guilt, anxiety, or low mood.
Motivational interviewing is a conversational style that helps people find their own reasons to change. It can be useful when motivation feels low or when someone wants to shift patterns that have been hard to break.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Estela will help figure out which methods fit a person’s goals, preferences, and day-to-day life, and she uses those methods together rather than sticking to one model. The aim is collaborative decision making about next steps.
Confirm current session options before booking, as specific formats are not listed here. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy week, shorten check-ins when needed, and plan exercises to practice between meetings. These practical benefits often help people keep therapy consistent while balancing family, work, and caregiving responsibilities.
Areas of expertise
Primary focus
Also works with
Additional focus areas
Therapeutic approaches
Experience
8+ years
Listed in
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oregon
Languages
English, Spanish
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of problems does she address?
She works with stress, anxiety, depression, relationship and parenting concerns, trauma and abuse, grief, shame and guilt, career issues, and related struggles.
How does she approach guilt or shame in sessions?
She uses a mix of client-centered listening and cognitive behavioral work to identify painful beliefs and test new ways of thinking and acting.
How many years has she practiced?
Estela has eight years of professional experience as a psychotherapist working with a broad range of concerns.
What credential does she hold and where is she based?
She is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) practicing in Pennsylvania.
Can I work with her if I’m not in the United States?
She accepts international clients. Confirm any local licensing or time zone details when scheduling.
Which languages are supported in sessions?
Sessions are offered in English and Spanish.
How are fees handled?
Cost varies with location and sessions are provided through a subscription that can be canceled at any time.
What do I do to begin working together?
Select the See online therapy options button, complete a short matching questionnaire, and schedule your first session.
Online talk therapy is not emergency care. If you are in danger or thinking about harming yourself, use the crisis numbers.