About Ellen
Ellen Dinsmore is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, and life transitions. She brings a calm, down-to-earth presence to sessions and focuses on practical steps that make daily life more manageable. Ellen works with people on career concerns, relationship stress, grief, and self-esteem issues as well as trauma-related struggles.
Her style is collaborative and straightforward. She partners with each person to set clear goals and to try small, doable changes between sessions.
Background and approach
Conversations in therapy are candid and respectful. Ellen aims to create a space where thoughts and feelings can be named without shame. Ellen uses a mix of approaches such as acceptance and commitment methods, cognitive behavioral tools, mindfulness, motivational interviewing, and client-centered care.
She adapts techniques to the situation and the person's pace, focusing on what helps most right now. Many sessions include simple exercises to practice coping skills and build resilience. With 15 years of experience as a Minnesota LICSW - Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker - Ellen draws on work with addiction, mood disorders, trauma, and stress-related concerns.
She also supports people navigating adoption and foster care issues, gender dysphoria, postpartum changes, and burnout from caregiving or work. People who meet with Ellen can expect clear communication and down-to-earth guidance. She encourages realistic goals, steady progress, and practical tools to handle worry, cravings, low mood, or major life shifts.
Therapeutic approaches for online work
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then choose actions that match their values. It can be useful for anxiety, avoidance, and life-change decisions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) breaks down unhelpful thought patterns and offers clear skills to shift behavior and mood, which is helpful for worry, depression, and some addictive patterns. Client-centered therapy focuses on listening, empathy, and supporting a person to find their own answers; it helps when someone needs a trusting space to sort out feelings.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Ellen will collaborate with each person to try techniques that match their goals and preferences, adjusting methods as progress unfolds. The process is paced to the individual's needs and emphasizes practical steps and steady gains.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, which allow flexibility for different schedules and needs. Video works well for full conversation and visual cues, phone can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat suits shorter check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflections between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, school, caregiving, or travel routines while keeping treatment consistent and focused on goals.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Career difficulties
Also listed
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- Minnesota
- Languages
- English
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