About Mary
Mary Gales-Wenz is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker with forty years of clinical experience. She works with adults who are dealing with stress, anxiety, addiction, trauma, grief, depression, and related concerns. Her approach is down-to-earth and practical so people can use what they learn right away.
She spent two decades providing care at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in St. Cloud and Minneapolis in both outpatient and inpatient settings.
Background and approach
After that she supported people through roles at Hazelden Center for Youth and Families, Allina Behavioral Health Clinics, and Central Minnesota Mental Health Clinics. She also provided clinical supervision in residential treatment and worked in behavioral healthcare management before keeping a small independent practice starting in 2009. Mary has experience with chemical dependency and mental health treatment programs.
She has worked with adults, seniors, and adolescents on post-traumatic stress, anxiety, sexual and physical trauma, mood disorders, and related issues. She follows current research and integrates newer methods that fit each person's needs. Her practice emphasizes the mind-body connection and helping people make sense of their reactions.
She uses approaches that focus on how thoughts, emotions, and behavior interact and on building skills for managing distress. This practical focus guides sessions so clients leave with specific strategies to try. Mary speaks English and practices in Minnesota.
She offers a mix of session styles suited to different schedules and communication preferences. To begin, a person completes a short matching questionnaire and schedules according to availability.
Therapeutic approaches and how they work online
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on understanding each person's experience and building a trusting, nonjudgmental relationship. It helps when someone needs to be heard and to find their own solutions rather than follow a strict plan.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect. It teaches practical skills for managing anxiety, depression, and unhelpful thinking patterns through short exercises and homework between sessions.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, provides concrete tools for handling intense emotions and improving emotion regulation. It includes skills for distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness that people can practice in day-to-day life.
Deciding on an approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the person about goals, preferences, and what has worked or not worked before. Together they choose or combine methods and adjust the plan as progress is made.
Online therapy with video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging makes it easier to fit sessions into a busy life. Video is useful for full sessions with face-to-face interaction, phone works well when bandwidth is limited, live chat can support brief check-ins, and messaging is good for ongoing reflection or quick questions between appointments. These formats give flexibility so therapy can fit different schedules and communication styles.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Also listed
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- First responder issues
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- LGBT
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Somatization
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 40 years
- Licensed
- Minnesota
- Languages
- English
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