About Penny
Dr. Penny Brower is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor with 34 years of experience. She uses practical therapy methods to help people manage stress, anxiety, relationship problems, depression, and other struggles.
Her work focuses on helping clients make clearer choices and build skills for daily life. She draws on approaches like cognitive behavioral techniques and acceptance-based work to help people notice what matters and change patterns that cause distress. She also uses attachment-based ideas to understand how past relationships affect current ones.
Background and approach
Sessions emphasize simple, concrete steps people can try between meetings. Dr. Brower has worked in community mental health, independent practice, and in-home settings.
Early in her career she provided in-home therapy for families with complex needs. She also spent eight years collaborating with the Air National Guard on programs aimed at reducing suicide risk and boosting resilience. Her style is collaborative.
She welcomes feedback about what helps and what doesn’t so treatment can be adjusted. She prefers to treat each person as an individual rather than reduce them to a diagnostic label. People who come to her often want support with anxiety, grief, addictions, identity concerns, family conflict, trauma, or major life changes.
She helps clients explore decisions that led them to the present, and build practical ways to feel more steady and in control.
How therapy approaches translate to online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people clarify their values, accept difficult thoughts or feelings, and take action toward a meaningful life. It can be useful for anxiety, stress, and coping with major life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing them with real-life experiments to change mood and behavior, which works well for anxiety and depression. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationship patterns shape current connections and communication, and it can help with intimacy, trust, and relationship repair.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with clients about goals, patterns, and preferences, then suggest methods to try. That decision is collaborative and can be adjusted over time if something is not helpful.
Online therapy offers flexibility in how sessions happen. Video calls allow face-to-face interaction for skill practice and emotional check-ins. Phone sessions can be a simpler option when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging allow quick reflections or ongoing support between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives while using the approaches described above to address anxiety, relationships, and everyday challenges.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 34 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
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