Brenda Lauer

Brenda Lauer is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with 15 years of experience in private practice. She works part time and typically has afternoon hours midweek. She also practices as a hypnosis coach and has worked with people from many walks of life, including military personnel and first responders.

Her style is gentle and warm. She aims to see things from each person's point of view and then help widen that perspective. She meets people with respect, compassion, and empathy. Brenda avoids one-size-fits-all care and focuses on what fits each person.

Brenda uses a mix of approaches, including Trauma-Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), client-centered work, cognitive behavioral techniques, and emotionally focused methods. She adapts these tools to the concern at hand rather than following a fixed plan. Sessions often blend practical skills with time to process feelings.

People come to her for stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, grief, anger, and depression. She also has experience with adoption and foster care concerns, caregiving strain, chronic illness and pain, attachment and relationship difficulties, body image, and related issues. Her background includes helping people who have PTSD, ADHD, and other co-occurring concerns.

Brenda practices in Missouri and offers services in English. She accepts international clients. To start, she asks people to use the Start Therapy button, fill a short matching questionnaire, and schedule based on her listed hours.

How Brenda’s approaches translate to online work

Brenda uses Trauma-Focused Therapy to help people identify and process distress tied to past hurts. This approach focuses on reducing the impact of traumatic memories and building coping skills for triggers and daily stress. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people notice difficult thoughts without getting stuck and clarify what matters most so they can take meaningful steps toward those values. Client-Centered Therapy centers the person’s experience and lets the therapist follow the client’s lead, offering empathy and nonjudgmental reflection.

Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. Brenda will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t helped before. Together they decide which methods to try and adjust the plan as needed based on what feels most useful.

Session formats are not listed in this profile, so confirm the available online options before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into busy lives, for example by reducing commute time, allowing shorter check-ins during a break, or avoiding the need to be on camera when that feels difficult. Licensed professionals, including this therapist, adapt tools like trauma processing, ACT exercises, and client-centered conversation to a remote setting when agreed on by the client and clinician.