Vanessa Martz, LPC

Vanessa Martz is a licensed professional counselor with 28 years of experience. She brings a calm, motherly presence to sessions and draws on a lifetime of personal and professional experience. Vanessa combines practical tools with steady emotional support to help people manage hard moments.

Her background includes work in science, the military, and higher education. She is a veteran and has deep personal experience with military life and grief through her family. That history informs how she listens to people who have faced loss, trauma, and major life changes.

Vanessa has cared for others in many roles. She is a birth and adoptive mother, foster parent to many children over decades, and the spouse of a veteran. Those roles shaped her understanding of parenting, blended family challenges, caregiving stress, and attachment concerns.

She practices from a Christian perspective and is also a licensed pastor who offers pastoral services. Vanessa says she will address spiritual beliefs in therapy, and asks that people who do not want to examine spirituality consider a different match.

Clinically she often uses cognitive behavioral methods alongside grief-focused work and other approaches to meet each person's needs. Her goal is to help people find peace with their choices and to rediscover joy in daily life. She aims to be supportive while gently challenging unhelpful patterns.

Approach and online therapy options

Many clients find cognitive behavioral work helpful for changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, especially for anxiety, depression, stress, and coping with life changes. CBT focuses on practical steps and homework that build new skills over time.

Client-centered therapy emphasizes a warm, nonjudgmental relationship where the therapist listens deeply and follows the person's lead; this helps people feel heard and respected while they make sense of difficult feelings. Emotionally-focused work concentrates on identifying and shifting emotional responses to mend connection and reduce distress in close relationships.

Vanessa treats choosing an approach as a team effort. She will discuss goals and preferences, try methods that match the issue, and adjust as needed so therapy fits the client's life and values.

Online sessions are available by video, by phone, via live chat, or through text-based messaging. Video calls let people work face-to-face from wherever they are, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat suits shorter check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to schedule sessions around work, caregiving, or travel while keeping therapy consistent.