About Cheryl
Cheryl Patterson is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps people manage stress, anxiety, addiction, relationship strain, and parenting challenges. She draws on practical experience from years in nursing and addiction recovery settings to guide short-term problem solving and longer personal work. Cheryl writes and speaks plainly, so visitors can quickly see what a first conversation might look like.
She spent much of her early career as a registered nurse in labor, delivery, postpartum, and nursery care, and later worked in adult psychiatric nursing.
Background and approach
Those roles shaped how she notices stress and physical reactions in day-to-day life. She then moved into counseling at a program supporting adults and teens in recovery and later opened a supervised recovery house. Cheryl uses client-centered conversations that focus on each person's goals and strengths.
She also applies motivational interviewing to support change and narrative therapy to help people rewrite parts of their story. Solution-focused work helps when quick, practical steps are needed to reduce overwhelm and build momentum.
Her clinical lens includes relationship and intimacy concerns, trauma and abuse, sleep and anger issues, self-esteem, career and life purpose, and women's health topics like pregnancy, postpartum, and fertility. She also addresses communication and family of origin problems, isolation, and financial stress when they come up.
Cheryl holds an MN LMFT and brings four years of counseling experience combined with longstanding nursing work. Sessions are offered in English and are available through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging.
Approaches used in online sessions and how they help
Cheryl blends client-centered work with motivational interviewing to help people clarify what matters most to them and find their own reasons for change. Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and reflecting so people feel heard and can set their own goals. Motivational interviewing uses curious, nonjudgmental questions to move someone from uncertainty toward action and is useful for addiction, ambivalence, and behavior change.She also uses narrative therapy to help people reframe stories that get in the way of progress. That approach examines recurring themes in a person's life and looks for alternate interpretations that open up new choices. Together these methods give both short-term steps and deeper shifts, and Cheryl will work with each person to decide which approach fits their needs and preferences in a collaborative way.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging which offer flexibility for different days and energy levels. Video allows face-to-face conversation, phone can be a good lower-bandwidth option, live chat works for brief check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, parenting, or recovery schedules while keeping the focus on practical progress.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Anger management
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 4 years
- Licensed
- Minnesota
- Languages
- English
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