About Dana
Dana Palermo is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) practicing in Illinois with 20 years of experience. She focuses on practical support for stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, ADHD, and coping with life changes. Her style is down-to-earth and respectful, aimed at helping people take small steps toward easier days.
Dana uses straightforward conversation to identify what’s most distressing and what’s working already. She listens for patterns in thoughts, routines, and relationships that contribute to worry, low mood, or trouble concentrating.
Background and approach
Together with each person she shapes a plan that fits their schedule and goals. Sessions often include simple strategies to manage strong feelings, improve focus, and build confidence. She helps people try manageable changes between sessions so progress carries into daily life.
Expect clear explanations and concrete steps rather than jargon. Dana also has experience with adoption and foster care issues, neurodiversity such as autism and Asperger syndrome, caregiver stress, chronic illness and pain, and eating and food-related concerns. She pays attention to how these issues interact with anxiety, attention, and mood.
The first meetings focus on understanding the current problem and practical next steps. Over time the work shifts toward building skills to handle setbacks and keep gains going. Dana aims to support and empower each person through realistic, steady change.
Approaches that guide online therapy and practical benefits
Evidence-based techniques focus on changing unhelpful thoughts and building useful habits. Cognitive-style approaches look at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions and teach simple ways to challenge negative thinking and reduce worry. These methods can help with anxiety, low mood, and self-doubt.Behavioral-style techniques emphasize small, doable changes in daily routines. This might include breaking tasks into bite-sized steps to improve concentration, setting predictable daily structure when attention is a challenge, or practicing short exposure to feared situations to reduce avoidance. These steps aim to make day-to-day life feel more manageable.
Finding the best approach is a joint process. The therapist will work with each person to test what helps most and adjust the plan as needed. Goals, practical constraints, and personal preferences shape which techniques are used and how fast the work moves.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, offering flexibility for different days and needs. Video is useful for deeper conversations and visual cues. Phone calls can fit a break at work or require less bandwidth. Live chat and messaging allow brief check-ins or ongoing written reflections between sessions. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent despite a busy life.
Questions people ask
What kinds of concerns does Dana help with?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How much clinical experience does she have?
What are her credentials and where is she based?
Which languages are supported in sessions?
What session formats are offered?
How does cost and payment work?
How do I begin working with her?
What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Antisocial personality
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- First responder issues
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.