About Debra
Debra Wallace is an experienced licensed marriage and family therapist who supports people facing relationship challenges, trauma and abuse, intimacy concerns, parenting struggles, depression, addictions, and sleep difficulties.
Background and approach
With an emphasis on attachment wounds and family dynamics, she also addresses issues such as abandonment, adoption and foster care, blended family transitions, codependency, communication problems, and complications arising from dissociation or disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.
Debra brings 21 years of clinical work to each therapeutic relationship and uses that background to tailor care to complex emotional and relational needs. Her approach blends attachment-based perspectives with emotionally focused strategies, EMDR for trauma processing, the Gottman Method for relational repair, and mindfulness practices to build self-awareness and regulation.
Debra aims to create an open, nonjudgmental space where clients can explore painful memories, improve communication, and develop healthier patterns. Licensed as an LMFT in Illinois and Wisconsin, she combines practical skills and empathic support to guide people toward more fulfilling connections and greater emotional balance.
Therapeutic Approaches Applied to Online Care
Debra uses Emotionally-Focused Therapy to help clients identify and shift negative interaction patterns and deepen emotional connection, a useful approach for repairing relationships and working through intimacy concerns. She also draws on EMDR to help process traumatic memories and reduce the intensity of distressing images and sensations, which can be adapted effectively to remote sessions with careful preparation. Attachment-Based Therapy informs her work by exploring early relationship patterns and how they shape current feelings and reactions, helping clients build more supported ways of relating.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to assess needs, goals, and preferences, and then recommend or combine methods that best support healing and growth. Clients and therapist decide together how to move forward and which interventions to prioritize.
Online therapy options include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging, providing flexibility for different schedules and comfort levels. These formats make it possible to access licensed professionals from varied locations and to continue regular work on relationships, trauma processing, and emotional regulation while accommodating busy lives and geographic constraints.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
- Intimacy-related issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Guilt and shame
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 21 years
- Licensed
- Illinois, Wisconsin
- Languages
- English