Christina Steele-Lietz, LMSW, LCSW

Christina Steele-Lietz brings a client-centered style to therapy that focuses on practical steps and personal choice. She meets people where they are and helps them decide what matters most to them. Christina uses listening, gentle questioning, and collaborative problem-solving to support change.

With two decades of practice, Christina draws on several evidence-based approaches, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and EMDR. She helps people cope with stress, anxiety, and trauma, and she also works with grief, depression, and life transitions. Her experience includes attention to caregiver strain, chronic illness, and aging and geriatric issues.

Sessions are structured around the person's goals. Christina helps clients name difficult feelings and build simple skills to handle them. She also guides people through relationship and intimacy concerns, identity questions such as LGBT matters and gender dysphoria, and practical challenges like sleep, eating, and career stress.

People who have faced loss, medical changes, or long-term stress will find focused support for coping and meaning-making. Christina incorporates mindfulness and emotion-focused techniques to help people stay present and reconnect with values. She aims to be a steady collaborator as clients try new ways of responding.

Christina holds LMSW and LCSW credentials and practices in Illinois. She offers a respectful, nonjudgmental space for adults to talk through challenges and plan realistic next steps.

How Christina’s approaches translate to online work

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice painful thoughts and choose actions that match their values. It is useful for anxiety, life transitions, and finding purpose. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing them with small behavioral experiments to reduce symptoms like low mood and worry. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a trauma-focused method that helps people process distressing memories and reduce their emotional intensity.

Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Christina will talk with each person about goals and preferences, and then tailor techniques from these methods to fit the situation. Clients and therapist decide together what to try and adjust as progress is made.

Session formats are not specified in the provided biography, so please confirm current options before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy day, allow shorter check-ins when needed, and reduce travel time. It can also let people use exercises and mindfulness practices in the moments they naturally occur, helping skills generalize into everyday life.