Dr. Mary Ann Dier-Zimmermann
Compassionate counselor for family-focused healing
- Credentials
- LCPC
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed in
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Mary
Dr. Mary Ann Dier-Zimmermann is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor practicing in Illinois with 35 years of experience. She brings long-term clinical experience to work on stress, anxiety, depression, grief, addiction, relationship issues, parenting concerns, and other life challenges.
She listens closely and treats each person with respect and dignity. Her approach is straightforward and warm. She combines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, attachment-informed work, and client-centered methods to help people sort out what matters most.
Background and approach
Sessions focus on practical steps, building awareness, and strengthening meaningful connections in a person’s life. Dr. Dier-Zimmermann also attends to issues tied to identity and life transitions, including LGBT concerns, intimacy, and caregiving stress.
She addresses complex family situations such as blended-family dynamics, adoption and foster care matters, and divorce or separation. She pays attention to how past losses, trauma, or abandonment shape current reactions. Her background includes study in religion, spirituality, and psychology, and she helps integrate personal beliefs into therapy when that is important to the person.
She offers an assessment and a collaborative plan, and revisits goals as progress unfolds. People can expect a nonjudgmental space where values and life experience are honored. Dr.
Dier-Zimmermann aims to help clients increase awareness, build better supports, and move toward more satisfying daily life.
Approaches that guide online family and parenting work
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people clarify what matters to them and take small steps toward those values. It is often used for anxiety, depression, and stress when someone wants more purpose and steadiness in daily life. Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early and current relationships shape feelings and behavior, and it helps people rebuild trust and closer connections with family or partners.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist and client review needs, goals, and preferences together and choose methods that fit. Treatment plans are adjusted as progress is made so the approach stays useful and relevant.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. These formats let people connect from home, fit sessions into busy schedules, and follow up between meetings when needed. Using a mix of formats can help maintain momentum and keep practical work moving forward while balancing family and other responsibilities.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Less about arguing with difficult thoughts, more about loosening their grip and acting on what matters to you anyway. Values and committed action carry the work, which suits conversation at a distance.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Looks at how early bonds shaped what you expect from closeness, and how that plays out now with a partner, a parent, or your own children.
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.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Mary
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point