Colleen Mest , LCSW

Colleen Mest is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 12 years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and trauma. She also supports people facing relationship strains, parenting challenges, grief, and women's issues. Colleen works in Pennsylvania and conducts sessions in English.

Her style is collaborative and compassionate. She focuses on strengths and helps people notice small changes that make daily life easier. Colleen listens first, then helps build practical steps to try between sessions.

She blends several practical approaches to fit each person's needs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps identify unhelpful thoughts and shift them. Client-Centered Therapy creates space for the client to guide what matters most. Mindfulness practices are used to calm the body and steady attention.

Colleen has a background in assessment and mental health treatment across many settings. Over a dozen years she has worked with people who have experienced trauma and with caregivers facing compassion fatigue. She also supports those dealing with fertility concerns, postpartum depression, and workplace stress.

In sessions she focuses on clear goals and small experiments. Conversations often include skills practice, short homework, and checking what worked. This makes progress easier to notice and keeps the work practical and grounded.

How Colleen’s Approaches Work Online

Client-Centered Therapy focuses on the client's priorities and pace, letting the person lead conversations while the therapist reflects and supports. This approach helps when someone needs space to sort thoughts and decide what matters most.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions. It teaches practical tools to test unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviors, which can reduce anxiety and depression symptoms over time.

Mindfulness Therapy brings simple attention and breathing exercises into sessions to lower reactivity and improve focus. These small practices can be used between sessions to manage stress or mood shifts.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to choose and adapt methods based on their goals, needs, and preferences. That process can include trying a technique and adjusting if it does not fit.

Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video is useful for deeper conversation and visual cues, phone can fit a short check-in or an appointment during a busy day, and chat or messaging can support brief check-ins or when typing feels easier. These options help people access care when scheduling, travel, or work make in-person visits difficult.