About Shanua
Shanua Smith is a licensed professional counselor - mental health (LPC-MH) practicing in South Dakota. She has 19 years of experience helping people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, relationship strain, and life changes. She offers a calm, nonjudgmental space where clients can talk through what feels overwhelming.
Sessions are collaborative and practical. Shanua focuses on helping people build coping skills and steady routines that fit everyday life.
Background and approach
Her work draws on several evidence-informed methods. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is used to spot unhelpful thinking and change behavior. Client-Centered Therapy guides the pace so each person leads the conversation.
She also uses Trauma-Focused approaches and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for processing difficult memories when appropriate. Shanua also brings Motivational Interviewing into sessions to help people find their own reasons for change. That can be useful for addiction, career shifts, or managing chronic health concerns.
Practical tools and short-term goals are common parts of her work. People come to Shanua for a range of concerns including parenting stress, sleep and eating problems, ADHD, intimacy and attachment issues, and compassion fatigue. She aims to help clients grow self-awareness, reduce symptoms that get in the way, and develop clearer plans for the next steps.
How therapeutic approaches work online
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and responding to the person in front of the therapist. Online this means the therapist follows the client’s lead, reflects feelings, and helps people set the pace for change. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) emphasizes identifying unhelpful thought patterns and testing new behaviors. In remote sessions clients and therapist can review thought records, try behavioral experiments, and track progress between meetings. EMDR is a trauma-focused method that works on processing distressing memories; when offered online the therapist adapts the protocol to fit video or phone formats and guides the client through paced processing.Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals, preferences, and what feels workable. That conversation helps decide whether to focus on skill-building with CBT, deeper memory processing, or a client-led style that centers emotional support.
Online sessions offer several practical benefits. Video calls let people use visual cues and share worksheets on screen. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging provide flexible, low-friction ways to keep momentum between longer sessions. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to try different session types as needs change.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 19 years
- Licensed
- South Dakota
- Languages
- English
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