About Jennifer
Jennifer Fitkin is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with two decades of therapy experience. She practices in Iowa and draws on long experience in residential programs, community services, and clinical leadership. Jennifer focuses on practical help for everyday struggles and aims to make the first steps toward change manageable.
She helps people dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, anger, addiction, and grief. Parenting challenges, relationship and family concerns, attachment issues, and adoption or foster-care topics are also areas she addresses.
How Jennifer works
Jennifer brings calm, straightforward guidance when clients are coping with life changes, midlife questions, or struggles with self-esteem and impulse control. Her work is informed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Attachment-Based Therapy, Mindfulness approaches, and Motivational Interviewing. Sessions tend to be goal-focused and skills-oriented, with an emphasis on practical tools people can use between meetings.
She also incorporates exploration of family of origin patterns and communication habits when those issues come up. Jennifer trained at the University of Northern Iowa, earning a Master of Social Work after a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.
Over the years she has held roles from front-line therapist to clinical director in residential programs, and has worked in settings that included foster care support and correctional services. Outside of therapy, she values time outdoors and physical activity.
Hiking, paddleboarding, backpacking, and CrossFit are regular parts of her routine, along with attention to sleep, movement, and nutrition as supports for mental wellbeing.
Jennifer lists 7 ways of working on the entry:
What Jennifer works with
The areas below are the ones Jennifer selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Parenting issues
- Anger management
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Attachment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Registers | LCSW, CSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 20 |
| 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
Online approaches that focus on values and skills
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people clarify what matters to them and take small steps toward those values while learning to sit with difficult thoughts and feelings. It can be useful for anxiety, stress, and life transitions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches concrete strategies to change unhelpful patterns; it often helps with mood disorders and impulse control. Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on patterns in relationships that developed early in life and helps people build healthier ways of connecting and communicating.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to pick methods that match goals, preferences, and the issues at hand. Sessions can mix approaches over time so the plan fits what is actually helping.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility. Video calls are good for face-to-face conversation and visual cues, phone sessions require less bandwidth and can work well when travel or a busy day makes timing tight, and live chat or text-based messaging lets people check in between sessions or use brief written exchanges. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, family, and daily life while still focusing on meaningful change.
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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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