LCSW, 7 years of experience
Frequently rebooked
Hello and congratulations on taking your first step towards bettering your mental health. The secret of getting ahead is getting started. I am here to be your fellow traveler as you begin your personal growth journey. My name is Laura Goncalves and I am a the founder of Day One Counseling as well as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. I have been providing psychotherapy services to individuals and families in the Pennsylvania area since 2018. According to the National Association of Mental Illness, 1.8 million adults in Pennsylvania have a mental health condition. Pennsylvanians struggle to get the support they need. 1.7 million people in Pennsylvania live in a community that does not have enough mental health professionals. My mission is to make therapy effective, accessible, and affordable to bridge this gap. I help teens adults and middle age adults struggling with anxiety, depression, or self-esteem issues become the best versions of themselves. Now more than ever, people are feeling anxious, overwhelmed and uncertain about how they are supposed to manage their relationships, careers and their lives. Pushing away your needs and not taking time for yourself can lead to long-term issues for your mind and body. I believe it shouldn’t be so hard to live a better life.
In our first session together, we'll start with brief introductions. I like to spend time building a strong therapeutic rapport. We will then dive into the specific challenges you're facing. This will help me create a tailored plan for us to work through in follow-up sessions.
My approach is Person-Centered. Person-Centered involves focusing care on the needs of the patient and ensuring that your preferences and values guide clinical decisions. This allows me to provide care that is respectful of and responsive to you. I tailor treatment for each of my clients starting with understanding where you are now and the challenges you are facing. I assist you putting a plan in place to help you move forward while offering an inclusive, safe space virtual appointments to suit your schedule.
I love working with teens, young adults, and middle age adults. My clients are eager to improve, but don't yet have the tools needed to make this goal a reality. They often feel stuck, overwhelmed and anxious about their life and decisions related to it.
I will help my patient by first becoming aware of the different cognitive distortions they are using, followed by challenging and replacing those unhelpful thoughts and believes then replacing with healthier ones instead.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) is a short-term goal-focused evidence-based therapeutic approach, which incorporates positive psychology principles and practices, and which helps clients change by constructing solutions rather than focusing on problems. In the most basic sense, SFBT is a hope friendly, positive emotion eliciting, future-oriented vehicle for formulating, motivating, achieving, and sustaining desired behavioral change.
Person-Centered involves focusing care on the needs of the patient and ensuring that your preferences and values guide clinical decisions. My approach is providing care that is respectful of and responsive to you.
5 ratings with written reviews
August 17, 2025
Laura is very approachable and friendly. She cares about you and it doesn’t feel fake. She does her best to offer suggestions and other resources to help as well as responding to messages/emails in a timely manner. All in all my experience with her has been great and she has been the best therapist I have had so far. :)
May 27, 2025
She is the first person to make me feel like I am not crazy. She listens, empathizes, and really makes me feel like she cares. I know that if I ever need Laura, she is there for me. She is amazing and I’m so lucky that I found her!
April 10, 2025
Dr. Laura was very easy to talk to and share my issues with her.