Christy Alten
Hope-focused counselor with long experience
- Credentials
- LPC-MH, LMHC
- Experience
- 31 years
- Licensed in
- South Dakota, Iowa
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Christy
Christy Alten is a licensed mental health counselor with more than three decades of clinical experience. She holds LPC-MH and LMHC credentials and practices from a perspective that blends practical techniques with spiritual reflection. Christy writes straightforwardly about hope and healing and welcomes people who are ready to take active steps toward change.
Her style is warm and direct. She avoids judgment and focuses on what can be done day to day.
Background and approach
Sessions aim to identify clear steps for coping better, improving relationships, and managing distressing symptoms. Conversations may include skill practice, problem-solving, and reflection on values and meaning. Christy has long experience with addictions and mental health concerns and brings that background into work on stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and parenting challenges.
Her toolkit includes cognitive behavioral strategies and skills from dialectical behavior therapy. She also draws on client-centered and existential approaches to help people find purpose and direction. She has additional experience supporting issues such as codependency, communication problems, divorce and separation, and family-related struggles.
Christy also addresses sleep problems, anger, career concerns, and compassion fatigue. Her practice sits in Iowa and she conducts work in English. Christy partners with clients to build a plan that fits each person’s goals and life.
She emphasizes collaboration and steady progress rather than quick fixes. Practical steps and ongoing support are central to her approach.
Therapeutic Approaches and Online Support
Christy uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help people identify unhelpful thoughts and change patterns that keep problems going. CBT is practical work that teaches skills for managing anxiety, depression, sleep issues, and behavior linked to addiction.She also uses dialectical behavior therapy skills to teach emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and better interpersonal interactions. DBT tools are helpful when strong emotions, anger, or relationship conflicts interfere with daily life.
Finding the right approach is a team effort. Christy discusses goals and preferences with each person and adapts methods to fit the situation. She focuses on clear steps you can try between sessions and adjusts the plan as needed based on progress and feedback.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to make therapy flexible. These options let people work around busy schedules, reduce travel time, and continue work during life transitions. Licensed professionals can use these formats to teach skills, review homework, and hold steady support while you practice changes in your everyday life.
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
What concerns does Christy address?
What is her general approach in sessions?
How much experience does she have?
What credentials and location apply to her practice?
In which language are sessions offered?
Which session formats are available?
How does cost and billing work?
What is the process for starting therapy?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 31 years
- Licensed
- South Dakota, Iowa
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Christy
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point