Margarita Araiza-Johnston, LCSW

Margarita Araiza-Johnston is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) who brings ten years of practice to her therapy sessions. She offers calm, practical support for people facing stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and parenting concerns. Sessions are offered in English and Spanish, and she notes work with LGBTQ+ issues and many relationship and intimacy-related concerns.

She trained in social work at Tulane University after studying sociology and anthropology at the University of Redlands. Early career roles included hospice social work and crisis and suicide counseling in Louisiana, where she developed experience in crisis response and end-of-life care.

Margarita uses approaches that help clients understand patterns in relationships and in their own thinking. She blends Attachment-Based ideas with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Emotionally-Focused techniques to help people name difficult feelings and try new ways of relating. Motivational Interviewing and Narrative Therapy also inform her work when people want to change habits or make sense of hard life events.

Her background includes mediation and family law mediation training, and experience with assessment, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and suicide prevention. She also works with fertility concerns, codependency, and compassion fatigue among other stress-related problems.

Clients are invited to bring real-life problems to sessions and work toward clearer choices. The therapy aim is to help people cope with life changes, mend important relationships, and find practical next steps. To begin, clients use the Start Therapy button and complete a short matching questionnaire before scheduling.

How attachment and CBT fit into online therapy

Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early relationships shape current bonds. Online sessions help people notice interaction patterns and practice different ways of connecting with partners or family members. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts influence feelings and behavior and gives concrete tools for changing unhelpful thinking and routines. Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps name core emotions and use them to repair or strengthen close relationships.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to decide which methods match their goals and preferences. That might mean starting with CBT skills for mood or stress, then shifting to attachment or emotionally focused work when relationship patterns come up.

Session formats are not specified in the provided biography, so confirm current session options before booking. Online work can make therapy easier to fit into a busy life - it can reduce travel time, allow shorter check-ins between obligations, and make scheduling across time zones simpler. Licensed professionals can adapt the approaches above to phone or video sessions when those formats are available, helping clients practice skills and try new ways of relating without needing extra travel.