About Mary
Mary Blankenburg is a licensed independent social worker with 35 years of practice. She approaches therapy with a focus on building a strong working relationship and listening closely to what a person brings to the room. Her work often centers on stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, and other life disruptions.
Mary has long experience across community mental health, adolescent services, and independent practice in Iowa. She uses straightforward, practical methods to help people notice patterns, try new responses, and manage daily pain or overwhelm.
Background and approach
She pays attention to the ways past hurts affect current reactions and relationships. Her style combines talk-based work with attention to the body and movement. This can mean simple practices to notice how the body reacts in tense moments and then try small, grounding adjustments.
Mary helps people connect those bodily experiences to thoughts and feelings so they have more choices in stressful moments. She draws on a number of approaches to match each person’s needs. Sessions can include skill-building for emotion regulation, gentle ways of revisiting painful memories, and examining how attachment history shapes present choices.
The aim is to increase self-kindness and reduce repeated patterns that cause pain. Mary tries to keep the process clear and gradual. She helps people set manageable goals, learn coping tools, and practice new ways of relating to themselves and others.
Therapy is presented as a collaborative path toward greater balance and resilience.
Therapeutic approaches in online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people clarify what matters most to them and then take small, values-based steps despite painful thoughts or feelings. It focuses on building a meaningful life rather than trying to eliminate every hard emotion. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and uses practical exercises to shift unhelpful patterns and reduce symptoms like anxiety or panic. Attachment-Based Therapy explores how early relationships shape expectations and reactions in current relationships, helping people recognize patterns and try new ways of relating. Choosing the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t helped before. Together they decide which methods to try and adjust the plan over time so it fits the person’s needs. Online therapy offers flexible ways to meet. Video calls let people use visual cues and more traditional session flow. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is low or for shorter check-ins. Live chat and text-based messaging allow brief check-ins, between-session support, or a way to keep momentum when schedules are tight. These options make it simpler to fit therapy into work, family, and daily life while still using the chosen therapeutic approaches.Questions people ask
What concerns does Mary commonly address?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How much experience does she have?
What credentials and location are listed?
Are sessions offered in other languages or internationally?
Which session formats does she use?
How does billing and cost work?
What should I do to begin therapy?
What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Family conflicts
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed
- Iowa
- Languages
- English
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.