About Valerie
Valerie LaPorte is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker with 21 years of professional experience. She brings a calm, straightforward approach to sessions and focuses on real-life problems like anxiety, depression, grief, and ADHD. Valerie aims to help people feel heard and to build practical steps forward.
She combines attachment-based ideas with client-centered care and cognitive-behavioral techniques. Sessions emphasize listening, problem solving, and short-term goal work. Clients can expect conversations that are direct and respectful, with an eye toward skills they can use between meetings.
Background and approach
Valerie has a long history of working with people who face serious mental health challenges and complex life stressors. Her background includes supporting people coping with trauma, addictions, compassion fatigue, and major life changes. That experience shapes a steady, nonjudgmental style in sessions.
The work often centers on improving relationships, managing emotions, and changing unhelpful thoughts or behaviors. Valerie uses mindfulness and elements of dialectical behavior therapy when it helps a person tolerate intense feelings and build new habits. She adapts techniques to what each person needs rather than following a fixed recipe.
Practical matters are part of the process. Valerie helps clients set clear, achievable goals and checks progress along the way. People who want straightforward guidance and skills-based work tend to find this approach useful.
How Valerie’s approaches translate to online care
Valerie often uses client-centered therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and mindfulness techniques. Client-centered therapy focuses on providing a respectful, nonjudgmental space so people can talk through concerns and find their own solutions. CBT looks at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interact and teaches tools to change patterns that cause distress. Mindfulness practices teach simple attention and breathing skills to reduce reactivity and increase calm.Choosing the right approach is part of the work and happens together. The therapist will listen to your goals and try methods that match your needs. If one strategy isn’t helping, she will suggest adjustments so the plan fits your situation and preferences.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy fit into busy lives. Video is useful for conversations that benefit from visual cues, while phone can work well when bandwidth is limited or you prefer not to be on camera. Live chat and text are convenient for brief check-ins or when a shorter, focused exchange is needed. These options make it easier to keep regular appointments and build skills over time.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Traumatic brain injury
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 21 years
- Licensed
- Minnesota
- Languages
- English
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