Virtual psychotherapy services anwhere in Massachusetts
You’ve taken time to look for help. Let’s make that effort matter.
Sharon Manning, LICSW, is a Massachusetts psychotherapist specializing in trauma, anxiety, and midlife transitions — supporting women through perimenopause and menopause, and adults caught between who they are and who they feel they must be.
What if healing begins with trusting that some part of you already knows how to come back to center—even if it’s hard to find right now?
Most people who find their way to therapy have already been trying to figure things out — on their own, with friends, maybe with a previous therapist. Something brought you here now, and that's usually worth paying attention to.
Anxiety, poor sleep, emotional overwhelm, patterns that won't budge no matter how much you understand them — these are the things people usually come in with. Sometimes the roots go back a long way, to early family environments that shaped how you learned to manage, adapt, and hold things together. Sometimes what looks like a psychological problem has a significant hormonal component that nobody has named yet. Often it's both.
I specialize in untangling that. My hospital-based clinical work helped me develop a clinical focus on women's mental health at midlife and menopause — a population that frequently arrives wondering if they're anxious, depressed, burning out, or losing their minds, when perimenopause has been quietly reshaping their neurological and emotional landscape for years. That piece matters clinically, and getting it right changes the treatment.
I work with a small number of private clients directly. The approach is tailored to you — I draw on CBT, IFS, EMDR, and psychodynamic work depending on what actually fits.
I offer a free 20-minute consultation so we can get a sense of whether we're a good fit.
I'm Sharon Manning, MSW, LICSW. I hold a Master of Social Work from Smith College School of Social Work and have been licensed to practice since 2007. I bring depth of training and experience to the work I do with you, including two completed psychoanalytic fellowships following graduation. My clinical training includes Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the Osher Center and Internal Family Systems training with Richard Schwartz. I serve on the Menopause and Midlife Advisory Board at Mass General Brigham.
I provide virtual psychotherapy services in Massachusetts across Greater Boston and MetroWest via telehealth— meeting you where it's most convenient, whether at home or at work, eliminating travel time and allowing you to stay in a space where you feel comfortable.
What I Help With
I've spent decades learning and applying evidence-based methods with real people living real lives. I trained early on to observe before I diagnose. Decades in, that instinct still shapes how I work: evidence-based methods are the tools, but what guides me is the actual experience of the person in front of me, in context.
Some of what brings people to this work:
Anxiety and chronic overwhelm
Sleep disruption tied to stress or hormonal shifts
Patterns that repeat despite insight — the "I know why, but I still can't stop" experience
Perimenopause and menopause-related mood, cognitive, and identity changes
Trauma, including early family-of-origin patterns that still shape how you cope
Burnout, and the overlap between psychological and physiological exhaustion
How I Work
CBT · IFS (Internal Family Systems)· EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)· Psychodynamic therapy — tailored to what actually fits, not a one-size-fits-all model.
Who I Work With
This work isn't limited to any one type of person — but certain patterns show up often enough among the clients I've worked with longest that they're worth naming:
Creatives — people for whom sensitivity, imagination, and nonlinear thinking aren't just traits but working tools, and who need an approach that supports rather than pathologizes that
Founders and organizational leaders — people who've built or carried something significant, and who are now running on a kind of fatigue that doesn't resolve with rest alone
Healers and energy workers — practitioners doing intuitive or somatic work themselves, who need a therapist fluent in that world rather than skeptical of it
Parents breaking the cycle — people devoted to raising their families differently than they were raised, who want to understand their own history well enough that it doesn't quietly repeat in their children
People whose early experiences sharpened their perception — often trauma-related — leaving them unusually attuned to undercurrents, shifts, and what's coming before others notice it
If you don't see yourself in these examples, that's fine — these are patterns I've noticed, not requirements. The door's always open to someone new.
FAQ
Do you take insurance? I'm out-of-network with insurance plans, and I provide a superbill you can submit to your insurer for potential reimbursement. See FAQ for more information. [FAQ]
What if I've tried therapy before and it didn't help? That's actually common, and it doesn't mean therapy isn't for you — it may mean the approach wasn't the right match. Part of what the consultation is for is figuring out whether this approach fits differently.
What happens in the free consultation? It's a 20-minute conversation to talk through what's bringing you in, answer your questions about how I work, and get a mutual sense of fit — no obligation either way.