Candice Conroy, LMHC
Licensed Mental Health Counselor & CBT Therapist
Specializing in CBT for Anxiety, Depression, and Trauma
If you are a current client with a scheduled video session, click the button below to access Candice’s virtual waiting room from your device.
My name is Candice Conroy. I am the founder and original CBT therapist of Let’s Talk! Counseling and Services and I’m glad you’re here. It means you’re taking the first (and probably the hardest) step toward getting better.
I know it can be difficult to choose a cbt therapist with so many to pick from – every single one different than the next, and yet somehow seemingly all the same. A therapist should be someone with whom you feel safe enough to let your guard down, whose judgment you trust to lead your treatment in a helpful direction, and whom you feel brings compassion into session regardless of what you share with them. Research has shown that if these foundations aren’t present, therapy is far less likely to be effective, regardless of the therapist’s approach.
So to help you decide if we might be what you’re looking for, here’s a bit about my background and our approach.
My Clinical Experience as a CBT Therapist
As a CBT therapist in training, I provided hundreds of hours of therapy to adults, children, families, and couples, all under the watchful eye of one of the highest ranked therapy training programs in the country. My mentors guided me in learning basic counseling skills, honing my emotional awareness, and perhaps most importantly, they pushed me to do my own emotional work to ensure my own past would be an asset in my work rather than a liability to my clients.
“We believe all therapists should be required to do their own emotional work – to ensure their past can become an asset to their work, rather than a liability to their clients.”
Before finishing my graduate training, I was hired by one of the largest mental health organizations in central Florida, where I worked for several years providing mental health and substance abuse counseling for one of their outpatient programs I was trained in providing cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety, depression, and addiction. I worked with groups and individuals, helping parents working on sobriety to regain custody of their children, former prison inmates struggling to re-integrate into society while staying clean, and veterans striving to resurface from the traumas of combat and military sexual assault. In my time there, I learned to build relationships with my clients based on mutual respect, trust, and compassion. I was blessed to watch people pull themselves up from the lowest lows back into functioning daily lives, healthier relationships, and sobriety.
But I craved still more education, training, and experience to help bridge the gap between my clients’ struggles and my skill set. I was brought on by a local clinical research company where I was trained in neurological assessments. While there, I provided screenings for adults who were starting to show signs of memory loss, to help determine their eligibility to participate in cutting edge clinical research studies for Alzheimer’s.
Over time, I decided that private practice is where my passion truly lies and where I could make the most difference. So in 2014, Let’s Talk! Counseling and Services opened its doors for the first time. I had one client, three other counseling jobs, and an endless passion for learning. In private practice, I found everything I was looking for – time and space.
“To have time to plan out quality treatment for my clients.
To know my clients as a person rather than a “number.”
To continue learning and honing my skills.
To help people with the issues I know best, at their pace.
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All the while, I continued to gain invaluable clinical experience working for other agencies and organizations, trying to round out my training. I began offering CBT therapy, every week, on a volunteer basis for the local LGBT Center. There, I worked with teens and adults, struggling with chronic anxiety, depression, and addiction. This is where I truly learned about the power of shame and early life experiences in contributing to our lifelong vulnerabilities to anxiety and depression. Many of my clients experienced suicidal thoughts, intense feelings of fear of simply being themselves, and painful self-loathing at times.
I was offered a position as Lead Therapist for a local inpatient addiction recovery center, where I worked providing assessments and cognitive behavioral therapy groups. I helped new clients find their motivation as they were just starting out in their first attempt at sobriety, while helping others to uncover the missing pieces that kept triggering their relapses, so they could finally start to heal.
While continuing my work at The LGBT Center, Orlando experienced what was then the deadliest mass-shooting in U.S. history at Pulse Nightclub. My heart simply broke as I spent days waiting to find out if any of my clients or friends had been at Pulse that night. After the memorial, as our city began to heal, I was blessed to be a part of the community mental health response and I accepted a position as one of the Crisis Counselors providing ongoing therapy to the LGBT community at The Center. In partnership with The Mental Health Association of Central Florida, as part of the Orlando United Counseling program, Let’s Talk! Counseling and Services also provided free counseling for several years to help heal community members affected by the Pulse nightclub shooting.
As the years have gone by, I’ve consolidated my efforts to working solely in private practice for the past several years. My training and experience has all centered around 3 main issues: anxiety, depression, and trauma. As I have come to recognize the ripple effects of these issues on other areas of life, I have also worked to build up my knowledge and skills in helping my clients to sort through other common problems such as relationship issues, low self-esteem, and lack of self-care and compassion to name a few.
Why I Became A CBT Therapist
My work in the the mental health profession began because I truly believe that the work we do on ourselves is the greatest contribution we have to give to this world. Having done a great deal of my own work, to ensure my past doesn’t impact my work with clients, I have seen the positive exponential effect this can have in my own life and in the lives of those around me. As Brene Brown says (and I agree), we have a tendency to “work our stuff out on other people.” I believe, the reverse is also true.
“One person, who takes the time to explore their inner habits (their knee jerk reactions, their triggers, their unresolved pain), has the ability to spare so much pain in this world by not inflicting old wounds on innocent bystanders.”
I find a lot of personal meaning in helping and watching people gain awareness of these pieces of themselves – to start start seeing themselves and their world differently, and start making changes to live the life they were always capable of (but never knew it).
My Approach To Therapy as a CBT Therapist
My clients find me to be truly invested in the work we do together and fully present in our time. I believe that understanding, encouragement, and a bit of humor can be some of our greatest tools in therapy. I offer my clients a safety zone where they can be unapologetically honest about who they are, how they feel, what they’ve been through, and what they want.
In my work, I put my focus, first and foremost, on compassion and acceptance and supporting my clients in building compassion for themselves. Then I encourage my clients to shift gears by learning about their problems and how they’ve developed over time, exploring the cycles that maintain their struggles, and setting concrete goals to start breaking out of these patterns. My clients often remark that over the course of our work together, they gain confidence in their ability to maintain the progress they have made over the long-haul once therapy has ended. Many tell me that they feel much more capable and in control – no longer at the mercy of their anxiety, depression, or trauma.
As a therapist, my approach to counseling is based on the techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT, an evidence-based approach to treating a variety of conditions and concerns. Over the years, as I have also come to recognize the intense need for emotional understanding and processing, I have also incorporated many techniques of Emotion Focused CBT in my work with clients. To better serve clients who have had difficulty with CBT therapy in the past, I’ve also incorporated mindfulness training and elements of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, to better help clients gain awareness of their inner experience as it’s happening.
In sessions, we’ll focus on what you’re experiencing right now, spend some time exploring how your current concerns relate to any previous significant experiences that have been weighing on you, and then turn our focus toward using that insight to make changes in the present.
I am humbled to to be a part of the process as my clients change the course of their lives, take back control, and regain hope and confidence in themselves.
Credentials
Licensed Mental Health Counselor, State of Florida, #14280
Master’s of Art in Mental Health Counseling from University of Central Florida
Community Involvement
Presenting several times a year at The University of Central Florida for graduate students in the Counselor Education program, on the topics of diagnosis & treatment, addiction, and mental health care systems Interviewed by Channel 9 News regarding the impact of chronic exposure to community violence on the development and high rates of PTSD among local residents in the city of Apopka
Completed Trainings
The Essentials of CBT by The Beck Institute, the founders of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Somatic Experiencing Therapy, Beginning 1-3, by the Somatic Experiencing Institute
The Health Anxiety Treatment Guide: ACT and CBT-Based Interventions for Illness Anxiety and Somatic Symptom Disorders
Crisis Prevention and Protocols for Teletherapy Counseling
Chronic Suicidality and Self-Destructive Behavior
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for Suicidality: Overcoming Stuck Points and Creating Mental Flexibility
The Dynamics of Drug Abuse, Addiction, and Treatment
Diagnosis and Treatment of Anxiety Disorders
Sexual Dysfunctions, Gender Identity Disorders, Paraphilias, and Sexual Offenders
Additional training records available upon request
