Ashley Hayes , LICSW

Ashley Hayes is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) practicing in Rhode Island. She focuses on women's issues like stress, anxiety, grief, and coping with life changes, and also helps people facing career strain, parenting challenges, and relationship stress. Her background includes work with serious illness, caregiving stress, and trauma-related concerns.

She draws on eight years of clinical social work experience in hospital and oncology settings. That work has shaped a whole-health outlook - recognizing how the body and mind affect each other. Hayes also brings personal perspective as a recent cancer survivor, which informs her understanding of medical and end-of-life stress.

Her style is warm and practical. She centers sessions on the person and their strengths. Sessions aim to set reasonable goals and break problems into manageable steps.

Therapy often focuses on noticing patterns of thought and shifting unhelpful habits. She uses mindfulness, cognitive behavioral ideas, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help with anxiety, depression, grief, and adjustment to change. Much of the work is about helping people hear themselves more clearly amid stress.

Ashley values the therapeutic relationship and collaborative planning. She helps clients identify small changes that fit their lives and checks progress as goals evolve. The approach is straightforward and geared toward usable coping skills rather than only talking about problems.

Therapy approaches and what online care looks like

Ashley uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help people notice their values and commit to actions that matter, even when strong feelings are present. This approach can help with anxiety, depression, and major life transitions.

She also draws from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which focuses on spotting unhelpful thinking patterns and testing small behavior changes to reduce symptoms like panic, low mood, or sleep problems. Client-centered work guides the pace so the person feels heard and in charge of goals.

Finding the right approach is part of the process. A therapist will talk with each person about their needs, goals, and preferences and together decide which methods to try. That collaborative planning can be adjusted over time if something isn’t working.

Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for face-to-face conversation and visual cues, phone calls can fit a short check-in or work when bandwidth is low, and chat or text messaging can support brief reflections or ongoing check-ins between sessions. These options make scheduling more flexible and can help people keep therapy consistent around work, caregiving, or medical appointments.