About Dawn
Dawn Tostenson is a Licensed Independent Mental Health Practitioner who uses a person-centered approach to help people facing anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship struggles. She aims to make therapy straightforward and practical so parents and individuals can find relief and clearer next steps. Dawn draws on cognitive behavioral tools to identify unhelpful thoughts and habits that worsen stress and anxiety.
She blends this with dialectical behavior skills to teach emotion regulation and coping strategies for intense feelings.
Background and approach
Mindfulness techniques are introduced to help people notice thoughts and bodily sensations without getting swept away by them. Sessions are conversational and goal-focused. Dawn listens first, then helps people set small, manageable steps they can try between meetings.
She works with concerns like addictions, grief, sleep problems, and low self-esteem by breaking larger problems into concrete actions. She has six years of clinical experience serving clients in Nebraska as a LIMHP - Licensed Independent Mental Health Practitioner. That background includes supporting people with attachment and abandonment issues, family of origin struggles, and blended family adjustments.
Dawn also helps people coping with career stress, parenting strain, compassion fatigue, and relationship communication problems. Her style is direct but warm, aiming to build practical skills while honoring each person’s story.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes a respectful, nonjudgmental stance where the therapist listens and follows the person’s lead to build insight and confidence. It helps when someone needs a steady, supportive space to talk through emotions and make personal choices.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. It is often used for anxiety, depression, stress, and sleep problems by turning worries into clear steps and experiments to try between sessions.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, adds practical skills for managing intense emotions and improving interpersonal communication. These skills are useful for people who get overwhelmed by strong feelings or struggle with relationship conflicts.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk about goals, try techniques that fit the person’s needs, and adjust methods over time so work stays helpful and manageable.
Online sessions can be done by video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to match different situations. Video works well for in-depth conversations, phone needs less bandwidth, live chat can be a shorter check-in, and messaging lets people reflect between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and keep continuity when schedules change.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Postpartum depression
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 6 years
- Licensed
- Nebraska
- Languages
- English
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