Shayna Schaefer, LCSW

Shayna Schaefer is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 28 years of experience helping people manage anxiety, depression, stress, and relationship struggles. She uses practical strategies to help clients build self-esteem and handle life changes. Shayna works in Delaware and offers services in English and Spanish.

She favors an approach that combines cognitive behavioral ideas with acceptance and mindfulness. Sessions focus on identifying unhelpful thinking, learning new behavior patterns, and practicing moment-to-moment awareness. These methods are used to address mood concerns, trauma, grief, and eating or intimacy-related issues.

Shayna also brings a client-centered attitude to therapy. She encourages people to set their own goals and to explore meaning and values when making choices. This helps when people face career shifts, caregiving stress, adoption or attachment questions, and other complex life events.

Practical skills are paired with space to talk about painful past experiences. Her work includes support for coping with bipolar symptoms, anger, and disruptions in relationships. She helps clients develop tools to communicate better and to set clearer boundaries.

Therapy is collaborative and paced to what each person needs. Sessions may include short exercises, skill practice between meetings, and discussions about next steps. Shayna aims to help clients leave therapy with clearer direction and usable skills.

Approach and online care that fits your life

Shayna commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in her online practice. CBT focuses on spotting unhelpful thoughts and testing them against daily life so people can change patterns that keep them stuck; it often helps with anxiety, depression, and stress. ACT teaches acceptance of difficult feelings while clarifying personal values and taking small steps toward them, which can aid coping with grief, trauma, or life transitions.

Choosing the right approach is a team effort. Shayna works with each person to identify goals, try techniques, and adjust methods over time so treatment matches what actually helps. Conversations in early sessions are used to set priorities and pick strategies together.

Online therapy is offered via video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make treatment more flexible. Video is useful for longer sessions and exercises that benefit from face-to-face interaction. Phone sessions can be a simpler option when bandwidth is limited or for brief check-ins. Live chat and text messaging work well for short updates, skill practice between sessions, or when writing feels easier than speaking. These options help fit therapy into busy schedules and different daily routines.