About Mary
Dr. Mary Ann Dier-Zimmermann brings over 35 years of clinical practice to her work in Illinois. She holds an IL LCPC and focuses on helping people navigate stress, anxiety, depression, grief, relationship concerns, and identity questions.
She listens carefully and aims to create a respectful space where clients can talk through what matters most to them. She begins by assessing current struggles and building a clear plan together. Sessions often address coping skills, patterns in relationships, and ways to manage mood and energy.
Background and approach
Religious and spiritual beliefs are treated as important parts of a person's life and may be included if the client wishes. Her approach is practical and person-focused. She uses methods that help people notice values, strengthen attachment and repair connections, and center the client’s perspective in each session.
Therapy may include exploring past losses, improving communication, or developing strategies for stress and burnout. Clients who reach out can expect straightforward talk and steady attention to their goals. Dr.
Dier-Zimmermann emphasizes respect for each person’s identity and life choices. She offers sessions that match individual needs and pace. Over a long career she has worked with many concerns including addiction, trauma and abuse, parenting strain, intimacy issues, codependency, and career transitions.
Her background in religion, spirituality, and psychology guides how she weaves meaning and practical change into ongoing work.
Therapeutic approaches and online work that fit your life
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people clarify what matters to them and take small committed steps toward those values. ACT is useful for anxiety, depression, and coping with life changes because it focuses on actions that matter, not just symptoms.Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early and current relationships shape how people connect now. It can help with intimacy issues, relationship patterns, and healing after abandonment or separation by strengthening how people relate to others.
Client-Centered Therapy places the person’s experience at the center of sessions. The therapist listens without judgment and follows the client’s pace, which can help when people need to rebuild self-esteem or work through grief.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and life context and then recommend methods that seem likely to fit. That choice is made together and can change over time as needs evolve.
Online sessions offer practical flexibility. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation when sitting together isn’t possible. Phone sessions use less bandwidth and can be easier on low-connection days. Live chat and text-based messaging support shorter check-ins, ongoing reflection, or scheduling around work and family obligations.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English