About Valerie
Dr. Valerie McGaha is a Licensed Professional Counselor with over 21 years of experience. She focuses on helping people who feel stuck by stress, anxiety, depression, and addiction.
Her work emphasizes practical change and everyday skills that make life more livable. She uses a somatic-informed outlook alongside evidence-based talk therapies to help people notice how the body and mind respond to stress. Sessions often include learning simple ways to calm the nervous system and to stay present in difficult moments.
Background and approach
Therapy is grounded in real-life steps rather than abstract ideas. Her approach blends Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, cognitive-behavioral techniques, attachment-oriented work, and client-centered listening. That mix helps people clarify values, challenge unhelpful patterns, and rebuild more satisfying connections with others.
She also draws on skills from dialectical and emotionally-focused methods when those fit the situation. Dr. McGaha works with individuals and family members dealing with substance use and long-term sobriety challenges.
She also supports people facing relationship strain, grief, blended family issues, and the impacts of medical concerns such as cancer or HIV. She attends to shame, guilt, and past family of origin wounds that keep people from moving forward. In sessions she aims to increase self-compassion, confidence, and practical decision-making.
Clients can expect a collaborative process focused on manageable steps and real improvements in day-to-day life.
How somatic and evidence-based approaches work online
Somatic-informed work helps people notice how sensations in the body relate to feelings and reactions. Online sessions can include guidance to track breathing, posture, and bodily tension and then practice simple grounding and regulation techniques that reduce stress responses.Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on clarifying what matters to a person and taking small actions toward those values. It helps with anxiety, depression, and motivation by teaching acceptance of difficult thoughts alongside committed behavior change. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationship patterns affect current connections and communication, and it supports building healthier ways of relating to others.
Finding the right approach is part of the process. The therapist will work collaboratively to choose techniques that fit the client's goals, symptoms, and preferences. That may mean combining somatic practices with ACT, CBT, or attachment work over several sessions.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to practice new skills between sessions. Licensed professionals can guide exercises, coach coping strategies, and support progress using whichever remote format best suits the client.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Communication problems
- Depression
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Jealousy
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Experience
- 21 years
- Licensed
- Oklahoma
- Languages
- English