Dawn Stonebraker, LISW

Dawn Stonebraker is an Ohio-licensed social worker with 16 years of professional experience. She focuses on helping people take the first steps toward a more fulfilling life, offering steady support through difficult transitions. Dawn emphasizes partnership in the work and encourages clients to build on strengths they already have.

Her background includes extensive work in aging and hospice settings, where she helped people manage stress, anxiety, grief, and depression. Those issues are common across many life stages, and she applies what she learned in those settings to a wider range of situations. She helps people facing loss of independence, changing roles, or the emotional strain of illness.

Dawn uses practical skills training alongside talk-based support. She helps people learn coping tools for anxiety and stress, and ways to process grief tied to jobs, relationships, or health changes. Sessions focus on doable steps rather than jargon-heavy theory.

She draws on several approaches to match each person’s needs, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Client-Centered methods. The goal is to find what fits the person’s story and daily life.

People who work with Dawn often want help navigating major life changes, caregiving strain, chronic illness, or the emotional fallout of loss. She invites clients to set small, realistic goals and to try practical strategies between sessions. The emphasis is on steady progress and shared problem solving.

How her approaches shape online therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on learning to accept difficult thoughts and feelings while committing to actions that match personal values. It can help people facing major life changes, chronic illness, or persistent worry. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches practical skills to shift unhelpful patterns. It often helps with anxiety, depression, and stress by giving clear tools to practice between sessions. Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes an open, nonjudgmental relationship where the person’s own goals guide the work; it supports exploration and decision making rather than directing outcomes.

Dawn approaches choice of methods collaboratively. She will talk with each person about their goals and preferences, and together they will try the approaches that seem most likely to help. Finding the right fit is part of the early sessions and can be adjusted over time.

Because the biography does not list specific session formats, confirm current session options before booking. Many people find online appointments useful for fitting therapy into busy schedules, reducing travel time, and making it easier to follow up after medical or caregiving appointments. Online work also allows practice of skills in everyday settings and lets sessions be shorter or timed around breaks when needed. Licensed professionals can adapt ACT and CBT exercises for remote sessions, and the collaborative process of choosing an approach works the same whether sessions are in person or online.