Frequently Asked Questions

Mostly we talk, and I ask a lot of questions.

I’ll want to know what’s been hardest in the last few months, what you’ve already tried, and how things are going with sleep, appetite, and the people you live with. Those last three tell me more than almost anything else.

Then I’ll ask what you want to be different, and I mean specifically. What does an ordinary Tuesday look like when this is better?

If you go quiet, I’ll ask you something. “I don’t know what’s going on” is a legitimate opening sentence, and by the end of the hour it will have turned into a starting point with a name on it.

No, and there’s a history behind that.

Before I was a counselor, I was a police officer, and after that an investigator for a Public Defender’s Office. I sat with people on the worst day of their lives, and on days they had made a great deal worse for themselves.

Whatever you’re planning to tell me, it isn’t going to move me off my chair.

No. You’ll get my actual read on things, including the parts you didn’t ask for.

Silence isn’t a technique I use. If I think you’re going around something, I’ll say so, kindly and out loud.

And when you’re doing well, I’m usually the first one to tell you.

No.

The practice is called Uri Christian Counseling because that’s who I am and how I was trained, and some people come to me specifically for that. Others come because anxiety is wrecking their week and the faith part is beside the point for them.

Both groups get the same care. If you’d rather leave faith out of the room, say so at the start and it stays out.

It looks like not having to translate yourself.

Both of my degrees came from Christian universities, so there has never been a version of this work where the spiritual part sat outside the clinical part. I look at a person from a standpoint of body, soul, and spirit, and what you believe is part of that picture rather than a footnote to it.

In practice, some people open with prayer, some close with it, and some want a passage to sit with during the week.

None of it happens unless you ask for it. I’m not going to hand you a verse in place of an answer, and I’m not going to pathologize the fact that you’ve been praying about this for a year.

And your faith never gets used as evidence that you should be handling this better than you are.

Fifty minutes, and three things mostly. That’s long enough to get somewhere real and short enough that you aren’t wrung out at the end of it.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the bulk of it. Plainly: the way you think about a thing sets how you feel about it, and how you feel sets what you do next. So we go after the thinking that’s working against you.

Mindfulness is for the people who spend today somewhere else, either back in last week or already dreading Thursday. Get good at just dealing with today and the world gets a lot smaller and a lot easier to manage.

Brief Solution-Focused Therapy is why there’s always a plan. We name what you’re working on, name what better would look like, and then check whether the steps are doing anything.

Yes, and it’ll be small.

The week between appointments is where the change actually happens. Our appointment is where we figure out what to try.

So you’ll leave with one specific thing to work on, sized to a week you’re actually going to have. I don’t overload people.

If something I gave you turns out to be too much, say so and we shrink it.

You’ll answer the same two questionnaires your doctor would hand you, the GAD-7 for anxiety and the PHQ-9 for depression. They’re short.

Repeating them across the months gives us a number to hold against the number from a month ago. Feelings about progress are unreliable, especially on a bad week, and a score is harder to argue with.

You’ll notice it the ordinary way too. Somebody asks how you’re doing and you answer without editing the sentence first.

Most people are looking at three to six months. Most also notice a real difference inside the first month, though that’s a pattern I see rather than a promise I can make.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that most people need to be in counseling for the rest of their lives.

The way I work has a finish line built into it. We name what you’re trying to change, build a plan for it, and check whether the plan is doing anything.

You’ll hear it from me when you’re ready to go. Telling someone they’re doing well and don’t need me anymore is one of my favorite parts of this job.

Yes. I call it a tune-up.

You graduate, you go live your life, and then two years later something new lands. A death in the family, a job that turns, a kid who moves out. You write me and we pick it back up.

Most people don’t need much when they come back. They already have the tools. They just want a few appointments with someone who knows the history.

I work with adults, one at a time, women and men.

Anxiety, depression, ADHD, grief and loss, and the stretch of life where a woman stops recognizing herself. Those are what come through my door most.

The people who do best with me want a plan and an endpoint. They’re usually competent at most of their life and quietly alarmed that one part of it has come apart.

About half have never done counseling before. The rest have, and they want something more directed this time.

It depends on what went wrong last time. Two things come up more than the rest.

The first is that nobody was keeping track. People tell me their previous counselor didn’t remember what they’d said from the last session, so every appointment started over from zero. I read back through my notes before yours, every single time.

The second one takes longer to spot. Years of treatment for anxiety or depression that never quite holds sometimes points at ADHD that was never diagnosed. Adults are good at hiding it, especially the ones who are good at everything else.

Naming it correctly changes what the treatment is aiming at. For a lot of people that’s the moment the whole thing finally moves, with a little grief mixed in for the years spent working on the wrong problem.

Yes, and you’re describing something I hear most weeks.

You used to be the organized one, and now you can’t find your keys, you blank in the middle of a meeting you’re supposed to be running, and you snapped at your husband last Tuesday over something that never used to register.

Then you go looking for the reason and there isn’t one. Nothing about your life changed, which is frequently more distressing than the symptoms.

Perimenopause does this, and hearing it named out loud is often the first relief a woman gets. From there we work on sleep, on breathing and full-body relaxation you can use in the middle of a workday, and on the friction at home. I’ll also ask whether you’ve had bloodwork done recently, because this isn’t a transition I’d want you handling with counseling alone.

Yes, and I’d rather tell you now than three sessions in.

Fresh trauma and complex PTSD belong with counselors trained in EMDR, which isn’t my modality. Couples work is something I deliberately stopped taking, and children and teenagers were never my population.

I’d rather send you to the right person on day one than have us both find out four months in that it wasn’t me. If that turns out to be your situation, you’ll still leave the consultation with a direction.

Everything I do is online, so there’s no office to come to.

I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) in Maryland. Those three states are where I can see you.

Counseling licenses work state by state, so you’ll need to be physically in one of them during our sessions. That’s a licensing rule rather than a preference of mine.

If you’re outside those three, write to me anyway and I’ll try to point you toward someone.

I don’t bill insurance. Payment is due at the time of service.

If you want to submit for possible out-of-network reimbursement, I’ll give you a superbill on request.

What your plan actually reimburses is between you and your insurer, so it’s worth one phone call to them before you begin rather than a surprise afterward.

Yes. Physicians, churches, attorneys, and other professionals send people my way, and I’m always glad to take that call.

Yes. Ask.

I’m a wife, the mother of three grown sons, and a grandmother of three. Outside of work you’ll find me traveling, cooking, or sitting somewhere quiet with my own thoughts for a while.

None of that is a secret, and some of it turns out to be relevant to whatever you came in with. When it isn’t, I’ll say so and hand the hour back to you.

If you want the easy one out of the way first: dogs, and Instagram gets more of my evenings than it probably should.

Call or write me and we’ll set up a free fifteen-minute consultation. My number is (410) 903-8473, and email or the contact form on this site work just as well.

On that call I’ll ask what’s going on and what you want to be different, and you’ll hear how I’d approach it.

Fifteen minutes is usually enough for both of us to know. New clients are welcome.