About Patricia
Patricia Prendergast is an LCSW who focuses on helping people navigate challenges such as addiction, trauma, relationship difficulty, grief, parenting strain, mood concerns, and issues with self-esteem and life purpose.
Background and approach
She brings 28 years of clinical experience in working with individuals and families, offering guidance across a wide range of concerns including ADHD, eating and anger issues, compassion fatigue, career questions, and the impacts of abandonment or attachment wounds. Her style blends client-centered listening with practical strategies informed by cognitive behavioral techniques, motivational interviewing, and narrative methods.
Patricia draws on attachment-based ideas to explore how early and ongoing relationships shape current patterns, while using solution-focused and motivational tools to set achievable goals and support change. She aims to create a warm, collaborative space where clients can articulate goals, learn coping skills, and develop clearer direction for healing and growth.
Based in Illinois, Patricia uses a straightforward, empathetic approach to help people identify priorities, build resilience, and work toward lasting change across life, work, and relationships.
Approaches That Guide Online Working Together
Attachment-based work explores how early and ongoing relationships shape current emotional patterns and relational responses, helping clients understand and shift repeating dynamics. Client-centered therapy emphasizes empathic listening and supports people in finding their own path, fostering self-awareness and empowerment through a nonjudgmental therapeutic relationship. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, offering concrete tools for managing mood, anxiety, and coping with stress.
Deciding which approach fits best is part of the therapeutic collaboration. The therapist will work together with each person to clarify goals, try methods that align with those goals, and adjust strategies based on what feels most helpful and practical for the client’s needs and preferences.
Online sessions can be scheduled as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging, providing flexibility for different routines and comfort levels. These formats make it easier to maintain consistency, access care from home, and fit therapy into a busy life while allowing licensed professionals to apply attachment-informed listening, client-centered support, and CBT techniques in ways that translate to virtual care.
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of concerns can Patricia help with?
What therapeutic approach does she use in sessions?
How much clinical experience does she have?
What are her credentials and where is she located?
Does she speak other languages or work with international clients?
In what formats are sessions offered?
How are sessions paid for and what do they cost?
What steps are required to start working together?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Eating disorders
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-love
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 28 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English