About Christy
Christy Alten brings more than three decades of counseling experience to her work. She holds LPC-MH (Licensed Professional Counselor - Mental Health) and LMHC (Licensed Mental Health Counselor) credentials and practices in Iowa. She focuses on helping people cope with stress, anxiety, addiction, depression, grief, and major life changes.
Christy frames therapy around hope and purpose. Sessions are nonjudgmental and rooted in a mix of evidence-based approaches and spiritual reflection when clients want that.
Background and approach
She has a long history working with adults and adolescents on substance use and mental health concerns. Her style is collaborative and straightforward. She helps people build practical skills for managing strong emotions, improving sleep, and rebuilding self-esteem.
She also supports career concerns, parenting stress, and coping after separation or loss. Christy has experience teaching and supervising other clinicians for more than 22 years. She offers guidance to newer counselors and to those who have been practicing for many years.
That background influences how she structures sessions and sets goals with clients. In therapy she blends client-centered listening with techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. She also uses existential ideas and the Gottman method when relationship topics arise.
Together with each person she builds a plan aimed at clear, achievable steps toward feeling better.
Approach and online therapy options
Christy often draws from client-centered therapy, which focuses on understanding each person's perspective and helping them set their own goals. That approach is useful when someone needs a supportive space to talk through feelings and decisions.She also uses cognitive behavioral therapy, which looks at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors connect. CBT provides concrete tools for anxiety, depression, sleep issues, and addictive patterns. Dialectical behavior therapy is another approach she uses to teach emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and skills for managing intense reactions.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. Christy will collaborate with each person to decide which methods match their needs, goals, and preferences, and she can adjust the plan as progress is made.
Online therapy options include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video lets people use face-to-face interaction from home or elsewhere, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited, and chat or messaging can work well for quick check-ins or people who prefer writing. These options make it easier to fit sessions into busy schedules and to continue care across different life demands.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 31 years
- Licensed
- South Dakota, Iowa
- Languages
- English