A.J. Garcia
Marriage and Family Therapist
A.J. Garcia, LMFT, QCS
Relationships matter. They always have to me.
I’m A.J. Garcia, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Qualified Supervisor, and founder of Thrive Counseling. I’m licensed to provide counseling in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina.
I started Thrive Counseling in 2012 because I wanted to build a practice around something I deeply believe: we were created for relationships. The relationship you have with yourself, your spouse, your children, your family, and the other important people in your life has a tremendous impact on how you experience life.
I genuinely enjoy getting to know people. I want to know what matters to you, what you’re working toward, where you’re getting stuck, and what you want to change. From there, we can figure out what will actually help you move forward.
What It's Like to Work With Me
If you’re looking for a therapist who will sit quietly and nod for an hour, I’m probably not the therapist for you.
I listen, but I also engage. I’ll ask questions, get curious, offer perspective, point out patterns, and challenge you. I’ll teach you practical skills and encourage you to actually use them. I want you to leave our conversations with a better understanding of what’s happening and a clearer idea of what you can do next.
I bring my personality into the room. I believe the relationship between a counselor and client is an important part of what makes counseling work, and I want our conversations to feel genuine and connected. You can expect warmth, honesty, humor, and a therapist who is actively engaged with you. At the same time, I take professionalism, appropriate boundaries, and the responsibility you are trusting me with very seriously.
I believe every person has inherent value. When you truly begin to believe that about yourself, it can influence the choices you make, the boundaries you set, what you’re willing to accept, how you communicate, and the relationships you invest in.
Ultimately, I want our work to help you develop clarity, skills, courage, and confidence that continue serving you long after our sessions end.
Relationships Are at the Center of My Work
I believe relationships are one of the most important parts of our lives. They influence how we experience connection, belonging, conflict, family, and so much of our every day. That’s why relationships have always been at the center of my work.
I work primarily with couples, teens, parents, co-parents, and individuals who want to strengthen their relationships, communicate better, establish boundaries, work through conflict, reconnect, and become more confident in the choices they’re making.
With couples, I want you talking to each other, rather than spending the entire session talking to me about each other. In Marriage and Couples Counseling (link → Marriage/Couples Counseling), I’ll help you slow down conversations, recognize patterns, communicate more clearly, repair conflict, and strengthen connection. I believe love is something we feel, but it’s also something we choose. Strong relationships require us to keep choosing to love every day, and that includes how we choose to connect.
I especially enjoy working with teens and their parents. Adolescence brings more independence, new relationships, outside influences, and bigger decisions. Through Teen Counseling (link → Teen Counseling) and Parenting Counseling(link → Parenting Counseling), I help teens develop confidence and relationship skills while helping parents remain an important source of connection and guidance as their children grow.
My work with Co-Parenting Counseling (link → Co-Parenting Counseling) and Collaborative Divorce (link → Collaborative Divorce) is grounded in many of those same principles. A marriage can end while the family relationships surrounding it continue. As a Mental Health Neutral in the collaborative divorce process, I help parents communicate, make thoughtful decisions, and keep their children at the center of the decisions that affect them.
The Experience Behind My Approach
I earned my graduate degree from the University of Central Florida in Orlando and hold a Certificate in Play Therapy. I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina, and a Florida Qualified Supervisor for Marriage and Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling Registered Interns.
Throughout my career, I’ve worked in private practice, school-based mental health programs, inpatient and outpatient substance-use treatment, correctional settings, and programs serving United States veterans and their families. I also spent time teaching high school, which gave me another perspective on working with teens outside of the counseling room. My experience has allowed me to work with a wide range of people, including at-risk and high-achieving youth, couples, parents and families, caregivers, business executives, and leaders. I’ve worked with people facing significant challenges as well as those who are doing well and want to continue growing, strengthening their relationships, and becoming more intentional about how they live and lead.
That range of experience has taught me to pay attention to the person sitting in front of me and determine what will be most useful for them. I don’t approach every client, relationship, or problem in exactly the same way.
My clinical background includes Family Systems, Solution-Focused Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Gottman approaches, and strengths-based work. Those approaches give me different ways to understand what’s happening and different tools to draw from. I use them intentionally based on the client, the relationship, and what we’re trying to accomplish.
My professional work also extends beyond counseling. Through Qualified Supervision (link → Qualified Supervision), I work with Florida Registered Marriage and Family Therapy and Mental Health Counselor Interns as they develop their clinical skills, professional judgment, confidence, and professional identity.
I provide Professional Consultation (link → Professional Consultation) to business leaders and professionals who want an experienced perspective on communication, relationships, conflict, boundaries, leadership, and the people side of their work.
Why Thrive Counseling
I started Thrive Counseling in 2012 with a clear idea of how I wanted to work with people.
I wanted relationships to matter. I wanted clients to experience honesty and encouragement. I wanted counseling to be practical. I wanted people to gain a better understanding of what’s happening and then develop the skills and confidence to make changes in their lives and relationships. And I wanted integrity and professionalism to guide the way we did all of it.
Those things still matter to me, and they’ve become the foundation for how we’ve continued to build Thrive Counseling.
One of my favorite parts of this work is seeing what happens when something starts to click, whether it’s someone becoming more confident in a decision, a couple learning to handle a conversation differently, a parent and teen reconnecting, or a client setting a boundary they didn’t think they could maintain. I especially enjoy seeing people recognize choices and possibilities they hadn’t considered before and then having the confidence to do something with them.
I get to invest in people and then watch them take what we’ve worked on and use it in their actual lives. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy this work so much.
That’s what I want Thrive Counseling to continue being about: strong relationships, greater confidence, and practical change that makes a difference in everyday life.
Ready to Connect?
Finding the right therapist matters. Credentials and experience are important. So is finding someone whose approach and personality work for you.
If you want a therapist who will listen and engage, ask questions, be honest with you, teach practical skills, and expect you to put those skills into practice, we may work well together.
I provide virtual counseling to clients in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina.
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