Alanna Higgins , LCSW

Alanna Higgins is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with ten years of professional experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, career challenges, and depression. She works with people who feel stuck, worn out, or unsure how to move forward. Alanna emphasizes practical steps and steady progress so clients can see small changes build over time.

Her approach treats clients as the experts on their lives. She listens for strengths and patterns, then offers tools that fit each person’s situation. Those tools may include thinking strategies, emotion regulation skills, trauma work, or short coaching-style goals to boost motivation.

Alanna also supports people facing compassion fatigue, caregiver stress, and issues tied to adoption or foster care. Additional areas she addresses include commitment and control concerns, feelings of emptiness, grief around forgiveness, and struggles with guilt or shame. She has experience with obsessive thoughts and compulsions, hoarding-related distress, and relationship wounds like infidelity and jealousy.

Her work draws on cognitive behavioral techniques, dialectical behavioral ideas, mindfulness practices, motivational interviewing, and trauma-focused methods such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Sessions are conversational and goal-oriented, with time spent practicing new skills between meetings.

People in Pennsylvania who prefer English-language sessions can connect with Alanna by using the site's sign-up process to complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule appointments. She aims to build a supportive, practical plan that fits each person's life and goals.

How evidence-based approaches translate online

Alanna uses cognitive behavioral therapy and EMDR as two common paths in her work. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing small behavior changes to reduce anxiety, improve mood, and tackle career or self-esteem goals. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is a trauma-focused method that aims to reduce the intensity of distressing memories so daily life feels less disrupted.

Finding the right approach is part of therapy. She will talk with each person about symptoms, history, and what they hope to change. Together they decide whether to focus on skills practice, trauma processing, motivation work, or a mix that fits the person's goals and comfort level.

Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to make consistent work achievable around busy schedules. Video sessions are useful for in-depth conversation and skills practice. Phone calls can fit a shorter check-in or work when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and messaging let someone check in between sessions, send short progress updates, or get brief coaching without a full appointment.