Afsha Merchant, LCPC

Afsha Merchant is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) who helps people manage stress, anxiety, depression, relationship struggles, trauma, and self-esteem concerns. She offers a calm, respectful space to talk through difficult moments and to name what matters most. Afsha speaks English, Spanish, Hindi, and Urdu, and works with people in Illinois as well as some international clients.

Her approach is collaborative and plainspoken. Sessions focus on practical skills and clearer communication rather than labels. Afsha uses tools from cognitive behavioral work to notice unhelpful thinking and from dialectical skills to manage intense emotions. She also brings body-focused techniques from somatic therapy when stress shows up physically.

Afsha pays attention to how culture, family background, and identity shape problems. She helps people sort out attachment and relationship patterns, work through grief or past abuse, and cope with chronic illness or caregiver stress. She also supports those dealing with adoption and foster care issues, body image, and codependency.

In sessions she helps people set small, realistic goals. That can mean practicing a communication skill, testing a new way of thinking, or learning a grounding exercise for panic. Therapy is paced to each person’s needs, with an emphasis on usable tools between meetings.

With seven years of experience, Afsha blends evidence-informed methods like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy with relational approaches such as the Gottman Method. She aims to make therapy understandable and useful for daily life.

How therapeutic approaches guide online work

Afsha uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice patterns of thought and try small behavior changes. CBT is useful for anxiety, low mood, and stress when someone wants clear steps to test and change unhelpful thinking. She also draws on Dialectical Behavior Therapy to teach emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness skills for intense feelings and relationship strain.

Many clients find these approaches pair well with somatic techniques that attend to how stress shows up in the body. Somatic work offers short grounding or breathing practices and body awareness exercises that can reduce physical tension and complement talk-based work. Together these methods give both skills and a way to address uncomfortable sensations.

Finding the right approach is part of the process. Afsha will work with each person to choose methods that fit their goals and preferences, and she adjusts strategies over time based on what helps. This is a collaborative decision, with pacing set by the client's needs.

Confirm current session options before booking so you know what formats are offered. Online work can make it easier to fit therapy into busy days, reduce travel time, and allow shorter check-ins when needed. It also makes it possible for some international clients to connect across time zones, while still keeping the work focused on practical skills and daily-life changes.