Dianna Smith

I've been doing this work for 25 years — which means I've sat with a lot of people in a lot of different kinds of pain, and I've watched most of them find their way through it. I work with adolescents, adults, and families dealing with trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, LGBTQ+ identity, cultural identity, and the messy overlaps between all of those things. I'm warm, direct, and probably a little funnier than you'd expect from a therapist. That's intentional. Some of the hardest healing I've witnessed happened in moments that also had some lightness in them. I'm LGBTQ+ affirming, work with couples and families in addition to individuals, and I accept Aetna, Carelon Behavioral Health, and Cigna through Headway — plus several additional insurers on Psychology Today.

My approach is strengths-based first. That doesn't mean I avoid the hard stuff — it means we start from what you're already capable of, instead of cataloguing everything that feels wrong. I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), and trauma-focused approaches, adapting based on what actually fits you and what the research supports for your specific situation.I'm collaborative by nature. I'll share my thinking with you, I'll tell you what I'm noticing, and I'll ask you to push back when something doesn't fit. Therapy is a working relationship — not a performance you give for an hour each week.

Your first session is mostly me listening and asking questions — not to evaluate you, but because I genuinely need to understand your situation before I can be useful to you. I'll ask about what's going on now, what you've already tried, and what you're hoping therapy can actually do for you. You don't need to have answers to all of that yet. I'll also tell you a bit about how I work and how we'll know if we're making progress together. By the end of the first session, most people feel like they have a clearer sense of what we're doing and why. That's the goal.