Paula Peterson

Paula Peterson is an LPC who brings 18 years of counseling experience to her work. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, grief, anger, depression, and major life changes. Paula writes plainly and meets clients where they are. She invites people to take the first step toward feeling better and acknowledges how hard that can be.

Paula chose counseling after seeing how much healing can happen when someone is willing to be vulnerable and heard. She earned a degree in Mental Health Counseling from the University of Wisconsin-Stout and has worked in day treatment and outpatient settings. That experience informs her practical approach to common struggles like trauma, self-worth, and life transitions.

In the room she looks for each person's strengths and builds on them. She uses Client-Centered Therapy to listen deeply, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to address thinking and behavior patterns, and EMDR for processing traumatic memories when appropriate. Mindfulness and Solution-Focused techniques also appear in her sessions to help people find coping tools and clear next steps.

Paula has worked with adults and adolescents and has experience with addictions, spiritual struggles, hospice and end-of-life counseling, postpartum depression, and workplace issues. She helps people sort through family of origin concerns, codependency, guilt and shame, and the search for life purpose.

If her approach sounds like a fit, Paula encourages contact to begin a conversation. She aims to build a collaborative relationship and to support practical change that fits each person's life.

How Paula’s approaches fit online work

Paula often draws on Client-Centered Therapy to listen and build a trusting relationship. That approach focuses on empathic listening and helping people name what matters to them. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and helps people practice different ways of coping and problem solving.

Finding the right approach is part of beginning therapy. Paula will work collaboratively to choose techniques that match a person’s goals, preferences, and the specific issues they bring. Together they decide whether to prioritize skill-building, trauma processing, or short-term problem solving.

Please confirm current session formats before booking, as specific options are not listed here. Online sessions can make it easier to fit counseling into a busy life, allowing people to meet from work during a break, avoid travel time, or choose a check-in that does not require video. Therapists can use brief focused sessions for a quick skills check or standard-length sessions for deeper work, depending on what a person needs and what the therapist offers.