About Laura
Laura Phen is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with 25 years of clinical experience. She brings a calm, straightforward approach and focuses on helping people navigate relationship stress, trauma, anxiety, and depression. She listens first and works with each person to set clear goals for therapy.
Her practice centers on talking through what matters most to the client. Sessions often focus on managing overwhelming feelings, improving communication, and restoring better sleep and daily routine.
How Laura works
She also supports people dealing with grief, compassion fatigue, anger, and self-esteem challenges. Laura uses practical tools from cognitive behavioral therapy to help change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. She blends client-centered ways of working so sessions follow the client’s priorities.
Dialectical behavior therapy skills and mindfulness practices are used when emotion regulation and stress tolerance need strengthening. Her experience includes long-term care for mood disorders such as bipolar disorder and helping people with trauma, post-traumatic stress, and abuse recovery. She also offers coaching-style support for career questions and life purpose concerns.
Additional focus areas include chronic illness, codependency, first responder and veteran issues, polyamory and non-monogamous relationship concerns, postpartum depression, and seasonal affective disorder. Sessions are offered in English and are provided to people located in South Dakota. She aims for clear communication and practical steps so people can use what they learn between sessions.
Laura lists 4 ways of working on the entry:
What Laura works with
The areas below are the ones Laura selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
- Intimacy-related issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Depression
- Emptiness
- First responder issues
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Parenting issues
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Stress, Anxiety
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 25 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | South Dakota |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches that guide online sessions
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and following the client’s agenda. The therapist creates an accepting space, reflects what the client says, and helps people clarify their goals and values.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect. It uses simple exercises to change patterns that worsen anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and low mood.
Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, teaches practical skills for managing intense emotions and improving relationships. Skills include distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and better interpersonal communication.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will discuss options, try methods that fit the client’s goals, and adjust the plan based on what helps. This is a collaborative process with regular check-ins about progress.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is useful for full conversations and visual connection, phone can be simpler when bandwidth is limited, and messaging allows brief check-ins or ongoing support between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy around work, caregiving, and daily life.
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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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