About Margaret
Margaret Couch is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 41 years of experience based in Illinois. She helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, bipolar symptoms, ADHD, addictions, grief, relationship and intimacy concerns, and parenting challenges. She also supports people coping with career shifts, eating and sleeping issues, anger, low self-esteem, and life transitions.
Margaret meets people where they are and treats each person as a whole, not a diagnosis. She values an individual's dignity and ability to choose the path forward.
How Margaret works
Sessions focus on practical steps and clearer thinking to make daily life easier. Her approach blends client-centered listening with evidence-based methods that teach concrete skills. She uses cognitive behavioral techniques to identify unhelpful thinking patterns.
She also draws on dialectical behavior strategies to build emotional regulation and distress tolerance. For relationship and attachment concerns she incorporates emotionally-focused ideas and the Gottman Method to help improve communication and connection. She has worked across many areas including adoption and foster care, caregiver stress, chronic illness, and body image struggles.
Margaret pairs many years of field experience with a practical, down-to-earth style. She aims to create sessions where people feel heard and leave with useful tools. To begin, a short questionnaire and scheduling follow the initial match process.
Margaret lists 8 ways of working on the entry:
What Margaret works with
The areas below are the ones Margaret selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Parenting issues
- Bipolar disorder
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LCSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 41 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Illinois |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches that translate to online work
Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes listening and working at the client’s pace. The therapist focuses on understanding a person’s experience and helping them find their own solutions, which fits naturally into conversations over video or phone.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and actions. Online sessions can review thought patterns, set homework, and practice skills between meetings to reduce anxiety or depressive symptoms.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches concrete skills for managing intense emotions and improving relationships. Skills training, problem solving, and crisis coping techniques can be taught in live sessions and reinforced through messaging or brief check-ins.
Finding the right approach is a shared process. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and needs to choose methods that fit each person. Plans can be adjusted as progress is made so therapy stays useful and relevant.
Online formats offer flexibility to fit therapy into busy lives. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a camera is not desired. Live chat and text messaging make brief check-ins and skill reinforcement easier between sessions. These options help people keep continuity of care while balancing work, family, and other responsibilities.
Start online instead of waiting
Our partner service asks a few questions about what you are looking for and matches you with a therapist for sessions from home.
Book with MargaretWe will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.
Common questions
What concerns does she address?
What is her general therapy style?
How much experience does she have?
Where is she based and what credential does she hold?
Which languages are supported?
What session formats are available?
How are sessions billed?
How do I start therapy with her?
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.
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you. Entries are not assessed or endorsed by this directory.
Other entries for stress, anxiety
Supportive LCSW helping people build strength and clarity
Practical, trauma-aware therapy for everyday life
Practical, relational therapy for life transitions