About Donna
Donna Altepeter is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people facing stress, anxiety, grief, depression, and life transitions. She writes in a straightforward way and focuses on working together with each person. Donna brings a calm, teach-and-learn attitude to sessions and believes people can change when given support and practical tools.
Donna draws on a client-centered stance and uses cognitive behavioral and mindfulness strategies to help people manage symptoms and daily challenges.
Background and approach
She also uses motivational interviewing and narrative ideas to help clients clarify goals and rewrite unhelpful stories about themselves. Sessions often include practical skill-building alongside reflective conversation. Her background includes many years working with bereavement, life-threatening illness, caregiving stress, and end-of-life concerns.
She has experience addressing intimacy issues, addiction concerns, parenting stress, sleep problems, and mood disorders. That range means she can meet many common struggles with tailored techniques and straightforward feedback. Donna completed a Master of Social Work from St.
Louis University and has practiced for many years, including teaching social work at the University of Wisconsin. She holds the credential LCSW, which identifies her licensure in Wisconsin. People who choose Donna often want a practical, collaborative approach.
Sessions are conversational and goal-oriented. She works to help clients build skills, make changes, and find more ease in daily life.
Practical therapy approaches for online care
Donna commonly uses client-centered work and cognitive behavioral therapy in online sessions. Client-centered work means the conversation stays focused on the person and their goals, with the therapist listening closely and shaping help around what matters most. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect and teaches concrete skills to change patterns that cause distress.She also brings mindfulness techniques into teletherapy to help with stress, anxiety, and sleep problems. Mindfulness practice helps people notice their thoughts and bodily reactions and respond with more calm rather than automatic reactivity. The therapist and client decide together which approach or mix of approaches fits best based on goals and preferences, and this matching is part of the work itself.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation for deeper work, phone sessions can fit into a busy day or use less bandwidth, live chat is useful for brief check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around life demands and changing schedules.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- Wisconsin
- Languages
- English