Maria Clara Salazar-Pretto, LCSW

Maria Clara Salazar-Pretto is a Florida LCSW with 20 years of clinical experience. She works with adults on stress, anxiety, depression, relationship and family concerns, trauma and abuse, grief, parenting, intimacy-related issues, ADHD, and other life changes.

She trained at California State University, Fresno and has a background in clinical psychology. Her work has taken her into hospitals, health centers, and private agencies. She has worked with people from young adulthood through later life and brings bilingual Spanish-English experience to conversations.

Her approach is client-centered and goal oriented. She uses practical techniques from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and mindfulness-based ideas. Sessions tend to focus on finding concrete steps, identifying unhelpful thinking or behavior patterns, and building everyday coping skills.

In sessions she listens, reflects, and helps people practice new ways of responding. She highlights validation and straightforward tools that can be used between meetings. The work aims at clearer communication, better emotion regulation, and more manageable routines.

People often bring concerns about merging households, blended family issues, co-parenting stress, and loyalty conflicts. She draws on systems thinking and brief solution-focused techniques to address these topics and other struggles that come with life transitions.