Donna Altepeter
Compassionate, practical therapy for parenting and life changes
- Credentials
- LCSW
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed in
- Wisconsin
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Donna
Donna Altepeter is a licensed clinical social worker with a long history in helping people navigate stress, grief, anxiety, and life transitions. She offers an empathetic, down-to-earth presence and focuses on practical steps parents and adults can use right away. Her style is collaborative - she listens first, then works together on goals that matter to each person.
Donna trained with a Master of Social Work degree and has practiced for many years in clinical and teaching roles.
Background and approach
She blends client-centered care with cognitive behavioral tools and mindfulness skills to address mood concerns, worry, sleep problems, and coping after loss. She also draws on motivational and narrative techniques to support change and build confidence. Her background includes long experience with life-threatening illness, bereavement, and caregiving stress.
She has taught social work at the university level for over 20 years, which influences her approach to learning and problem solving in sessions. Clients can expect clear explanations and practical assignments when appropriate. Sessions emphasize collaboration and respect for each person’s knowledge about their life.
Donna believes people have the capacity to change and that therapy is a joint effort to find what works. She works with adults concerned about parenting, aging issues, mood disorders, grief, addiction-related struggles, and related topics. Donna’s practice is based in Wisconsin and she brings 12 years recorded experience under the LCSW credential WI LCSW 6641-123.
Her tone is warm and straightforward, aimed at parents and adults who want usable tools and steady support through difficult life moments.
How Donna’s approaches work online
Donna often uses a client-centered approach that begins with listening to what matters most and shaping sessions around each person’s goals. This helps when a parent or adult needs straightforward support and practical next steps.She also uses cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on spotting unhelpful thoughts and testing new behaviors to ease anxiety, low mood, sleep troubles, and stress. Mindfulness techniques are used alongside CBT to build calm and present-moment focus, which can help with worry and emotional regulation.
Choosing the right method is a team effort. Donna will talk with the client about their goals, try approaches that fit, and adjust over time based on what helps. That collaborative planning makes the work more relevant and usable for day-to-day life.
Online sessions offer flexibility for busy families and adults. Video calls let the therapist observe reactions and teach skills in real time, while phone sessions can be easier when screens are difficult. Live chat and text messaging are useful for short check-ins, coping reminders, and follow-up between longer conversations. These options make therapy more accessible and easier to fit into a family schedule.
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.
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
Also works with
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- Wisconsin
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Donna
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point