About Denise
Denise Stutes is a licensed independent social worker (LISW) practicing in Iowa. She brings five years of hands-on therapy experience and a long history in mental health settings. Denise focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship and parenting concerns, and addiction issues.
She spent many years working in community settings, hospitals, domestic violence shelters, and corrections before moving into her current therapy role. That background exposed her to severe physical and mental trauma and a wide range of life challenges.
How Denise works
Those experiences shape how she responds to complex problems now. Denise uses a person-centered, direct, and interactive style. She blends client-centered care with cognitive behavioral strategies, emotionally-focused ideas, existential perspectives, and mindfulness practice.
Sessions aim to highlight personal strengths and practical steps someone can try between appointments. Clients can expect straightforward feedback, encouragement, and occasional lightness when it fits. Denise emphasizes empowerment and supports people as they learn new ways to cope and relate.
She says small shifts add up over time. Her focus areas include grief, bipolar concerns, coping with life changes, communication problems, codependency, caregiver stress, domestic violence recovery, and compassion fatigue. Denise looks for realistic goals and helps people track progress in ways that feel manageable.
She welcomes conversations about goals, values, and next steps, and aims to create a nonjudgmental space where people can work toward greater balance and resilience.
Denise lists 8 ways of working on the entry:
What Denise works with
The areas below are the ones Denise selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Anger management
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Traumatic brain injury
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Training and background
| Register | LISW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 5 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Iowa |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Therapeutic approaches and online care
Denise often combines client-centered work with cognitive behavioral techniques to help people notice patterns and try practical changes. Client-centered therapy focuses on listening, reflecting, and building on a person's strengths to guide their own growth. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps identify unhelpful thoughts and behaviors and tests small experiments to change them.She also uses emotionally-focused ideas to address relationship patterns and manage strong feelings. That approach helps people understand and shift how they respond when emotions run high. Together, these approaches are chosen collaboratively based on a person's goals, needs, and comfort with different styles of work.
Online sessions make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives. Video calls let someone see and interact with the therapist in real time. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging offer brief, flexible ways to touch base between longer sessions. These options give practical flexibility while allowing therapists and clients to focus on real problems and progress.
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Common questions
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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