About Wendie
Wendie Vanderwater is a licensed clinical social worker with over two decades of experience. She takes a straightforward, nonjudgmental approach and helps people who are feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, depression, grief, or ADHD-related challenges. Wendie speaks plainly and works with each person to decide what feels comfortable in therapy, whether that includes homework or a gentler, talk-focused style.
Her sessions are practical and down-to-earth. She asks questions to understand a person’s needs and uses a mix of techniques such as cognitive behavioral strategies, mindfulness practices, and skills from dialectical behavior therapy.
Background and approach
Those tools are blended to match what helps each individual make steady changes. Wendie encourages small, regular actions outside sessions. She might suggest journaling, mindfulness exercises, or social activities like volunteering or a book club to increase connection and purpose.
She frames therapy as a partnership where the client guides the pace and focus. Clients can expect clear communication and honest feedback. Wendie emphasizes realistic steps people can take to feel better and to manage emotions, relationships, and daily demands.
Her aim is to help people build skills that fit their life, not force a one-size-fits-all plan. Based in Montana, Wendie brings 22 years of clinical experience to work with adults on issues including relationship concerns, trauma and abuse, self-esteem, parenting stress, eating and intimacy-related issues, and career or life transitions.
How Wendie's Approaches Work Online
Wendie commonly uses cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness practices in her online sessions. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing small behavior changes to improve mood and reduce anxiety. Mindfulness therapy teaches simple attention and breathing exercises to help people notice feelings without getting overwhelmed and to build calm in daily life.She also draws on skills from dialectical behavior therapy when emotion regulation or interpersonal difficulties come up. Those skills include practical ways to manage intense feelings, improve communication, and tolerate distress in the moment. Choosing which approaches to use is a shared process; the therapist and client decide together what fits goals, needs, and preferences over time.
Online formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and practice of skills, phone sessions can be lower-bandwidth and useful for shorter check-ins, and live chat or text messaging supports brief coaching or journaling-style exchanges between appointments. These options help people keep momentum, try different ways of working, and find what feels most useful for them.
Questions people ask
What kinds of concerns does Wendie help address?
What is Wendie's therapeutic style like?
How long has she been practicing?
Where is Wendie licensed and based?
Which languages are sessions offered in?
What session formats are available?
How are fees and payments handled?
How do I begin working with Wendie?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Traumatic brain injury
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 22 years
- Licensed
- Montana
- Languages
- English
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.