Joanne Waithaka

Joanne Waithaka is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 28 years of clinical experience. She supports people facing relationship strain, family conflict, parenting stress, and major life changes. Joanne also helps with trauma and abuse recovery, depression, and coaching around personal goals.

Joanne uses straightforward, practical methods in sessions. She listens for patterns in communication and helps people try small, doable steps to change them. Sessions often focus on clear goals like improving conversations, handling separation, or managing midlife transitions.

Her background includes long experience with adoption and foster care issues, immigration concerns, and problems tied to family of origin. She also has a history of working with aging and geriatric issues and with people who identify as veterans or have military-related concerns. This experience informs her attention to cultural and life-stage factors.

Joanne draws on approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, and Systemic Therapy. Those methods are used to help clients reframe painful stories, set practical goals, and shift daily habits that keep problems stuck.

Joanne holds an MA and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT, with licensure in North Carolina and practice listed in Virginia. Sessions are conducted in English. If considering work together, confirm current session options before booking so you know how sessions are offered.

How therapeutic approaches guide online sessions

Joanne commonly works with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Narrative Therapy in ways that translate to online work. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings and choose actions that match their values; it can help with depression, midlife transitions, and major life changes. Narrative Therapy focuses on the stories people tell about themselves, helping them separate from limiting narratives and try new behaviors in daily life.

Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Joanne will talk with each person about their needs, goals, and preferences and suggest methods to try. Together they check what is helping and adjust the plan as the work progresses.

Confirm the session formats available before booking so you know how meetings will be held. Online work can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule, shorten check-ins when time is limited, and reduce travel time. It also allows people to practice new communication skills in day-to-day settings and bring real-life situations into conversations with the therapist.