Jennifer Garland, LCSW

Jennifer Garland is an LCSW with 17 years of clinical experience and holds LCSW credentials in Illinois and Missouri. She works with adults facing stress, anxiety, depression, substance use, parenting challenges, trauma and abuse, relationship and intimacy-related concerns, and a wide range of family and life transition issues including blended family concerns.

She focuses on practical steps people can use between sessions. Conversations tend to identify what is causing the most strain now and what small changes could make daily life easier. Jennifer draws on cognitive-behavioral ideas to address thinking and behavior patterns, and on attachment-focused thinking to look at how relationships affect emotion and trust.

Her style uses client-centered principles that keep the person’s perspective central. Motivational interviewing techniques are used when substance use, habit change, or readiness to change are part of the work. Narrative approaches can help reframe difficult stories that keep people stuck.

Jennifer has long experience supporting adults who survived childhood abuse and who are managing co-occurring challenges such as grief, caregiving stress, or mood disorders. She also works with people navigating adoption, foster care issues, fertility struggles, and the practical strains of blended households.

Sessions aim to combine realistic strategies with an understanding of relationship patterns. Practical tools, short-term goals, and attention to how past attachment experiences shape current responses are common features of her work. She asks clients to try small changes between sessions and then reviews what worked and what did not.

If you are a parent or partner adjusting to a new household, shifting roles, or co-parenting arrangements, she offers direct, experience-based help to sort those pressures and plan next steps.