Shawn Mcgivern, LMHC

Shawn Mcgivern is a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) practicing in Massachusetts with 27 years of experience. She focuses on helping people through anxiety, depression, relationship stress, grief, trauma, and identity concerns. Shawn aims to make therapy straightforward and practical for everyday life.

Shawn uses a collaborative style that centers the client's strengths. Sessions look at emotions, communication patterns, and practical steps people can try between meetings. She often helps clients build clearer boundaries, stronger self-esteem, and better ways to handle conflict and intimacy-related worries.

Her work addresses a wide range of concerns including eating and sleep problems, parenting strain, career stress, and the fallout from divorce or separation. She also supports people dealing with abandonment, attachment issues, codependency, and problems with commitment or control. Shawn welcomes people exploring identity and LGBT-related issues as part of their care.

In session, she draws on approaches such as acceptance and commitment ideas, attachment-based thinking, client-centered listening, cognitive behavioral tools, and emotion regulation skills from dialectical behavior therapy. The focus is on usable strategies rather than jargon. Shawn helps people translate insight into concrete behavior change.

People who come to Shawn often want help coping with life changes, improving communication, or recovering from past hurt. She encourages clear goals, small experiments, and honest conversation to move forward at a manageable pace.

Therapeutic approaches to use in online care

Shawn draws from cognitive behavioral therapy and attachment-based approaches in her work. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps people notice and change unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns, which can reduce worry, low mood, and problems like procrastination. Attachment-based therapy focuses on how early relationships shape expectations and reactions in close relationships, and it can help improve communication and emotional safety in partnerships.

Finding the right approach is part of the process. Shawn works collaboratively with clients to decide which methods fit their needs, goals, and preferences. She checks in about what is working and adapts the plan so people can try different tools and see what helps most.

The therapist's biography does not list specific online session formats, so confirm available options before booking. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life, reduce travel time, and allow shorter check-ins when schedules are tight. It can also let people use video or phone in ways that suit their energy, bandwidth, or comfort with being on camera.