Janice Ruchlis, LMFT

Janice Ruchlis is a licensed marriage and family therapist with thirty years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, and issues with self-esteem. She supports people facing addictions, grief, parenting strains, intimacy concerns, and life transitions. Janice also works with those coping with chronic illness, ADHD, career stress, and identity questions related to LGBT concerns.

Her style is straightforward and warm. Sessions focus on practical change alongside understanding where difficulties began. She combines cognitive behavioral ideas with attachment-focused work and mindfulness practices to help people notice unhelpful patterns and try new ways of responding. Janice also draws on emotion-focused and narrative approaches when useful.

Janice frames therapy as a process of exploration and skill-building. Conversations identify upsetting thoughts, painful memories, and relationship patterns. Together they test small changes and track whether new strategies help in daily life.

Her background includes long experience with a wide variety of life challenges, including parenting and blended family matters, adoption and foster care topics, aging and caregiver stress, and issues around body image and sexuality such as kink and alternative sexual cultures. She values cultural differences and brings that awareness into each session.

People choosing her often want practical tools plus room to make sense of their history. Janice helps set collaborative goals, offers concrete techniques, and adapts methods to the person's needs and pace.

How these approaches translate to online therapy

CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing new behaviors. Online sessions use practical exercises and homework to change how a person responds to stress, anxiety, or mood problems. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationships shape current bonds and reactions; it helps people notice patterns in close relationships and try different ways of connecting. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches concrete skills for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness, which can be practiced between sessions.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with the person to choose methods that match their goals and preferences. That process may blend techniques so sessions feel tailored and useful rather than rigid.

Online therapy offers flexibility for many people. Video calls enable face-to-face conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or for shorter check-ins. Live chat and text messaging make it easier to fit support into busy days and to share concerns in the moment. These options let people keep continuity when travel, work, or caregiving make in-person visits difficult.