About Stephanie
Stephanie Petersen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW). She has 14 years of direct practice and offers a calm, practical style that focuses on skills and insight. Stephanie uses straightforward tools to help people manage stress, anxiety, grief, and life transitions.
Her background includes hospital-based medical social work and home health, plus years of telehealth practice. That mix shaped a focus on coping with illness, chronic pain, and caregiver stress.
Background and approach
She also helps people facing relationship and communication problems, addiction, and self-esteem struggles. In sessions she teaches concrete coping skills and helps clients notice patterns in their thoughts and behavior. She draws on cognitive behavioral and mindfulness approaches to reduce unhelpful thinking and build steadier habits.
Motivational interviewing is used when people want to strengthen motivation for change. Stephanie also uses psychodynamic ideas to look at how past experiences influence present reactions. That perspective can help with attachment, abandonment, and commitment concerns.
Her aim is to combine practical tools with a clearer understanding of underlying issues. Clients can expect a nonjudgmental tone and an emphasis on collaboration. Stephanie explains techniques in plain language and practices them together with the person she is working with.
She works by phone, video, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit varied schedules and needs.
Approaches that guide online work and coping skills
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people identify what matters most and take action toward those values even when anxious or upset. It focuses on noticing difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, which can be useful for anxiety and life change. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches practical techniques to reduce unhelpful thinking and change routine reactions. It is often used for stress, anxiety, and low mood. Mindfulness Therapy teaches simple attention and breathing practices to calm the mind and increase present-moment awareness, which supports emotional regulation and coping.Finding the right approach is a team effort. The therapist will talk with each person about their goals, preferences, and what has worked or not worked before. Together they will try techniques and adjust the plan based on how the work fits the client’s life and progress.
Online formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule. Video calls let people work face-to-face when a fuller conversation is helpful. Phone sessions are a lower-bandwidth option for quick check-ins or when being on camera is not desired. Live chat and text-based messaging support brief check-ins, homework, and ongoing encouragement between sessions. These options aim to make consistent care more flexible and accessible for varied needs and routines.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sexual dysfunction
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- Michigan, Missouri
- Languages
- English
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