Dianne Smith
Practical, skill-focused therapy for life transitions
- Credentials
- LMFT
- Experience
- 43 years
- Licensed in
- Idaho
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Dianne
Dianne Smith is a licensed marriage and family therapist with decades of experience. She brings a direct, practical style to sessions while keeping a kind and understanding tone. She focuses on teaching skills and sharing information so people can manage lifes bumps.
Her goal is to help clients move forward toward the hopes they identify for themselves. She favors clear, skill-based approaches. That includes trauma-informed methods, cognitive behavioral techniques, and dialectical tools to build coping strategies.
Background and approach
Dianne emphasizes learning - she believes knowledge gives people options when they feel stuck. In session she listens for each persons values and goals. Then she suggests techniques that match those priorities.
Sessions often include practice of concrete skills, straightforward feedback, and agreed next steps to try between meetings. Her background spans many areas related to family and parenting concerns as well as stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, grief, depression, addictions, and self-esteem. She also works with issues such as attachment, control, abandonment, and post-traumatic stress.
Clients who prefer a no-nonsense, education-focused therapist may find her approach helpful. She aims to partner with people to identify what will unstick them and to build practical ways forward.
Evidence-based approaches you can use online
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, focuses on building emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness skills. It is useful when strong emotions, relationship struggles, or self-harming urges make daily life hard. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT, helps people spot and shift unhelpful thoughts and habits. It breaks problems into manageable steps and teaches skills to reduce anxiety, depression, and unhelpful behaviors. Trauma-Focused Therapy centers on understanding and processing traumatic experiences while teaching coping tools to reduce trauma-related symptoms.Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and symptoms, then suggest which method or combination might fit best. Adjustments are made as work progresses so the plan matches what actually helps.
Online sessions use video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy flexible. These options let people fit care into busy schedules, revisit notes or exercises sent by message, and maintain continuity when in-person meetings are difficult. Licensed professionals can teach the same skills and guide practice through these formats, helping clients build new habits from wherever they are.
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.
Mindfulness Therapy
Attention training: noticing thoughts and physical feelings as they arrive without being carried off by them. Much of it is practice you do yourself, so guidance over video or audio works much as it would in person.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Grief
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 43 years
- Licensed
- Idaho
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Dianne
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