About Penny
Dr. Penny Brower uses practical, person-focused therapy to help people manage stress, anxiety, relationship struggles, depression, and life transitions. She combines clear talking, skill-building, and steady support so people can make choices that fit their values and goals.
She brings 34 years of clinical experience and holds an IL LCPC. Her work has included in-home therapy with complex families, roles in community mental health, independent practice, and several years developing resilience and suicide-risk reduction programming for the Air National Guard.
Background and approach
In sessions she listens for what matters most to each person. She helps identify patterns that keep problems stuck and then tries small, practical steps to shift those patterns. Conversations focus on what to do differently and how to handle setbacks when they happen.
Her approach draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, cognitive-behavioral strategies, attachment-based ideas, client-centered listening, and the Gottman Method for relationship work. These tools are adapted to each person’s goals rather than used as fixed formulas. People can expect a collaborative style where feedback shapes the plan.
She encourages learning skills for managing strong emotions, improving communication, coping with loss, and reducing addictive patterns. The emphasis is on usable strategies that fit daily life. Dr.
Brower aims to help people feel more intentional and capable in their decisions. She frames change as a gradual process and supports steady progress toward clearer priorities and more satisfying connections.
Therapeutic approaches adapted for online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on clarifying what matters to a person and taking committed steps toward those values while learning to sit with difficult thoughts and feelings. ACT can help with anxiety, depression, and life transitions by building flexible ways to respond instead of getting stuck.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors influence each other and uses practical exercises to change patterns that cause distress. CBT is useful for anxiety, mood concerns, and managing unhelpful habits.
Attachment-Based Therapy pays attention to how past relationships shape current connection and trust, which can be helpful for intimacy issues, relationship conflict, and feelings of abandonment.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to choose or blend methods that match their goals, needs, and preferences. That shared planning is revisited as therapy unfolds so the approach can change if something isn’t helping.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility. Video calls approximate in-person conversation and allow visual cues, phone sessions can fit into a busy schedule or require less bandwidth, and live chat or text-based messaging supports short check-ins and ongoing reflections between sessions. These options make it easier to keep momentum, practice new skills between meetings, and connect when in-person visits are difficult to arrange.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor 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