Penny Gifford , LPC, LCPC

Penny Gifford is a licensed professional counselor with three decades of experience helping adults cope with major life challenges. She works with people facing stress, anxiety, depression, addictions, mood conditions, and concerns tied to relationships and self-worth. Penny creates a calm, nonjudgmental space where clients can build new skills and feel more in control of daily life.

Her approach is collaborative and practical. Sessions focus on learning tools that can be used between meetings, such as ways to manage strong emotions, improve sleep, and handle interpersonal conflict. She also supports people dealing with grief, career shifts, body image, and the strain of caregiving.

Penny blends several therapy styles to meet each person where they are. She pulls from client-centered work to center each person’s goals, cognitive behavioral strategies to shift unhelpful thinking and behavior, and solution-focused methods to set clear, manageable steps forward. This mix helps keep sessions focused and goal-oriented while honoring individual values.

Clients often leave sessions with concrete practices to try at home, from coping skills to communication strategies. Penny encourages steady, realistic progress rather than quick fixes. She emphasizes safety, respect, and collaboration during the process.

Based in California, Penny holds LPC and LCPC credentials and offers therapy in English. She is comfortable addressing a wide range of concerns including trauma, eating and sleeping issues, ADHD, bipolar mood concerns, and questions related to LGBT identity.

Approaches that translate well to online care

Penny uses client-centered techniques to make sessions focused on each person’s goals and values. This approach emphasizes listening, empathy, and shaping work around what matters to the client, which helps guide practical steps during remote meetings.

She also uses cognitive behavioral therapy, which breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches straightforward tools to change them. CBT works well online because homework, thought records, and behavioral experiments can be assigned and reviewed between sessions. Dialectical behavior therapy techniques are another tool she draws on to teach emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness for intense feelings and relationship stress.

Finding the right mix of approaches is a collaborative process. The therapist will help identify what feels most useful based on your goals, symptoms, and preferences, and then adjust methods as progress is made. Clients participate in choosing skills and setting small, measurable steps.

Online therapy offers practical flexibility. Video calls let you see facial cues and practice skills in real time, phone sessions work when bandwidth is limited, live chat allows shorter check-ins, and text messaging supports ongoing feedback between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules while keeping work focused and consistent.