Shiho Murakami , LICSW, MD, LCSW-C

Shiho Murakami is a licensed social worker who helps people facing issues related to gender and sexual identity, family conflict, trauma, parenting, and self-esteem. She speaks English and Japanese and works from Maryland. Her approach is practical and respectful, aimed at helping clients take small, manageable steps toward change.

Murakami focuses on understanding each person's story before suggesting ways forward. She listens without judgment and builds a plan that fits the person's values and daily life. Sessions often include clear goals, simple skills practice, and discussions about what is working and what needs adjusting.

Her background includes six years of professional experience in community and clinical settings. That experience includes supporting people coping with abandonment, adoption and foster care questions, attachment issues, and blended family challenges. She has also worked with concerns such as body image, caregiver stress, codependency, and substance-related problems.

Therapeutic work may draw on cognitive behavioral tools to shift unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, attachment-focused ideas to strengthen relationships, and acceptance-based strategies to live with hard emotions while pursuing valued goals. Dialectical skills and motivational interviewing techniques can appear when building emotion regulation and commitment to change.

Shiho aims to make therapy a collaborative process. She supports parents and individuals who want practical strategies for daily life. Conversations are tailored to each person’s needs and paced to their comfort level.

How therapeutic approaches translate online

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on helping people clarify what matters to them and take small steps toward those values while making space for difficult feelings. It can help with anxiety, low self-worth, and parenting stress by shifting attention to meaningful action rather than struggling with every uncomfortable thought.

Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationships shape current patterns with others and the self. Online work can use this approach to improve communication, sense of safety in relationships, and patterns that show up in family or caregiving roles.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals, history, and what methods feel most comfortable. Together they decide which strategies to try and adjust the plan as progress happens.

Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to match different schedules and needs. Video helps when visual cues matter for connection, phone calls can be useful when bandwidth is limited, and chat or messaging can fit short check-ins or clients who prefer writing. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives while still using ACT and attachment ideas in practical ways.