Amy Hayes, LCSW

Amy Hayes is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with more than 22 years in counseling. She helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, grief, relationship strain, and challenges connected to trauma and abuse. Her work also addresses addictions, self-esteem, sleep and eating concerns, parenting stress, career questions, anger, and bipolar mood issues.

Amy adapts her style to each person's needs and comfort level. She draws on experience from large-city and small-town settings and from working with people across different cultures. Her motivation comes from overcoming her own major life challenges and from seeing that recovery and growth are possible.

In sessions she uses practical, evidence-based techniques aimed at helping people make concrete changes. That often means focusing on daily habits and tasks, learning coping skills for intense emotions, and looking at how thoughts and behaviors interact. Amy emphasizes small, achievable steps that support real-world improvements.

She also works with longer-term pain such as loss and trauma, helping people find ways to reduce suffering and rebuild. The approach is collaborative - she listens first, then helps design a plan based on each person’s goals and pace. The aim is to open options, teach new life skills, and support steady progress.

Amy is based in Delaware and offers a compassionate, practical approach for people ready to begin healing and change.

Approaches used online and in session

Amy commonly uses cognitive behavioral ideas and humanistic, task-oriented approaches in her work. Cognitive behavioral techniques look at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect and teach practical skills to manage anxiety, depression, and mood swings. Humanistic approaches focus on the person’s strengths and values and support self-directed growth and healing.

She blends task-oriented strategies that break goals into small steps and homework-style tasks that build everyday skills. These tasks help with practical problems like sleep, routines, coping with cravings, parenting challenges, and managing anger after trauma or loss.

Finding the right approach is part of the process. Amy works with each person to identify goals and then adjusts methods to fit those goals and preferences. That collaboration helps ensure the plan feels doable and matches what matters most to the client.

Confirm the session formats available before booking so you know how sessions are arranged. Online work can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life by reducing travel time and allowing check-ins that match your schedule. It can also support different session lengths and focused check-ins when needed, helping therapy connect with everyday routines and responsibilities.