About Brenda
Brenda Lauer is a Licensed Professional Counselor with 15 years of clinical experience. She practices from Missouri and brings a calm, warm presence to sessions. Brenda emphasizes respect and empathy while helping people through hard moments.
She often helps people coping with stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, grief, anger, and depression. She also supports concerns related to adoption and foster care, aging and geriatric issues, attachment difficulties, autism and Asperger syndrome, body image, chronic illness and pain, and caregiver strain.
Background and approach
Other focus areas include communication problems, commitment issues, codependency, and blended family challenges. Brenda uses a range of approaches tailored to each person. She draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally-Focused Therapy, Client-Centered methods, and Solution-Focused work.
She does not rely on a one-size-fits-all plan and prefers to learn about each person's needs first. Her counseling style is gentle and warm. She aims to see situations from her clients' points of view and then help widen perspective.
Sessions typically involve listening, reflecting, and trying practical steps that make daily life easier. Brenda has experience with varied populations, including military and first responders, and has supported people with diagnoses such as PTSD, anxiety, depression, and attention challenges. She also offers hypnosis coaching as an additional tool when appropriate.
Approaches that translate well to online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then focus on actions that match their values; it can be useful for anxiety, depression, and stress. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and uses small experiments and new skills to shift patterns, which works well for anxiety and mood concerns. Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes a respectful, nonjudgmental relationship where the person leads the pace and topics while the therapist listens and reflects.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Brenda will talk with each person about goals and preferences and then suggest one or a mix of methods. That decision is collaborative and can change as needs evolve.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy fit into busy lives. Video lets you read facial cues and do deeper work, phone calls can be easier when bandwidth is limited, chat or text can suit quick check-ins or those who prefer not to be on camera. These options help people fit counseling into afternoons, work breaks, or different time zones while still using evidence-informed approaches.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
Also listed
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Traumatic brain injury
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- Missouri
- Languages
- English