Dr. Sherrin Packer-Rosenthal , LCSW, LPCC

Dr. Sherrin Packer-Rosenthal is a California-based LCSW and LPCC with 40 years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, trauma, parenting concerns, and big life changes. She offers calm, nonjudgmental guidance and helps clients take practical steps toward feeling more capable and connected. Her style emphasizes listening, collaboration, and building useful skills for everyday life.

Her approach draws from attachment-based ideas and client-centered practice to create a respectful space for self-reflection. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy methods are used to spot unhelpful thinking and test new behaviors that reduce anxiety and improve coping. Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills help with intense emotions and staying grounded during hard moments.

Dr. Packer-Rosenthal has kept up with developments in psychology, neurology, and biology throughout her career. She has a National Institute of Mental Health fellowship background in community mental health and has worked on founding shelters and children’s support programs. That experience informs her focus on practical supports and early identification for children's needs in educational settings.

She explains strategies plainly and helps clients practice them between meetings. Clients learn to notice patterns, repair relationship ruptures, and build self-compassion. Parents gain tools for advocacy and navigating school services like IEPs and 504 plans.

Her work also addresses a range of related concerns such as abandonment, adoption and foster care, attachment issues, caregiver stress, chronic illness, body image, and codependency. Sessions are offered in English and designed to fit the challenges people bring at different life stages.

How therapeutic approaches translate to online care

Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early relationships shape current patterns. Online work uses conversation and reflection to notice attachment patterns and practice new ways of connecting, which can help with parenting and relationship repairs.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions interact. In remote sessions this can mean setting simple experiments and homework between meetings to test new behaviors and reduce anxiety or stress.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, emphasizes emotion regulation, mindfulness, and practical skills. It can be useful for managing intense feelings and improving daily coping, with skills taught and practiced during calls or short messaging check-ins.

Choosing the right approach is collaborative. The therapist will discuss your goals, preferences, and situations, then suggest methods to try together. Adjustments are made over time so the work fits the person rather than forcing a single technique.

Online sessions offer practical flexibility: video calls let therapists observe body language and have longer conversations, phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited, live chat is useful for short check-ins, and text messaging supports brief reflections or skill practice between appointments. These options help people fit therapy into busy schedules and keep momentum between meetings.