Charlene Thiede
Compassionate, experienced support for families
- Credentials
- LMSW, LISW
- Experience
- 37 years
- Licensed in
- Michigan, Iowa
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Charlene
Charlene Thiede is a licensed social worker with 37 years of practice. She holds LMSW and LISW credentials and works from a strengths-based, person-centered foundation. She meets people where they are and focuses on practical steps to move forward.
Parents and caregivers often find this direct, commonsense approach easier to follow when life feels overwhelming. Her early work as a school social worker shaped how she sees child and family struggles.
Background and approach
That experience led to years of counseling children, teens, and adults in clinics and community agencies. She learned concrete ways to help families manage behavior, stress, and conflict. In sessions she talks through problems with clarity and warmth.
She draws on approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to teach skills for handling strong emotions and changing unhelpful thinking. Motivational Interviewing helps when someone feels stuck and needs a nudge toward change. Charlene also uses mindful practices and client-centered techniques to keep sessions grounded in each person’s real life.
She aims for brief, usable goals so progress feels visible. Parents will find her practical suggestions focused on small steps that make daily life easier. Her work covers a wide range of concerns relevant to families - parenting challenges, grief, anxiety, addiction, relationship and family problems, ADHD, and coping with life changes.
She explains options plainly and helps people choose what feels most useful for them.
Approaches that guide online family and parenting work
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and responding to each person’s experience. It helps parents and family members feel heard and builds on existing strengths to solve everyday problems. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, teaches practical tools to spot and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. It is useful for anxiety, depression, parenting stress, and mood challenges.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with each person or family about goals and preferences. Together they decide whether skill-based methods like CBT or a more supportive, person-centered path makes the most sense for the situation.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit busy family schedules. This flexibility makes it easier to keep appointments around school, work, and caregiving responsibilities. Therapists can teach skills, coach through parenting moments, and check progress across different formats so families can use what works best for them.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Concrete skills for riding out strong emotion, tolerating distress, and handling relationships without things escalating. The skills are practised in daily life, so between-session support by message or phone fits naturally.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 37 years
- Licensed
- Michigan, Iowa
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Charlene
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point