William Swieringa
Calm guidance for life’s big changes
- Credentials
- LCSW
- Experience
- 39 years
- Licensed in
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About William
William Swieringa is a licensed clinical social worker with 39 years of experience. He helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, and other life changes. He often supports those dealing with grief, trauma, sleep and eating issues, and challenges around intimacy and self-esteem.
He uses straightforward, practical methods in sessions. Meetings focus on clear steps and real-life strategies. William blends talk and exercises so people can try tools between visits.
Background and approach
His background includes long experience with mood disorders, bipolar conditions, and compassion fatigue. He also works with concerns such as ADHD, career stress, and issues related to aging and caregiver strain. His practice includes supporting those with attachment or abandonment wounds, adoption and foster care experiences, and chronic health struggles.
William draws on several therapy methods to match a person’s needs. He uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy along with mindfulness and motivational interviewing tools. These approaches help people notice what matters, change unhelpful patterns, and build workable habits.
Sessions are offered in English and he accepts international clients. William provides video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Starting involves a short matching questionnaire and scheduling through the platform’s Start Therapy flow.
Approaches that translate well to online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people notice what truly matters and take small actions toward those values even when feelings are hard. It’s useful for stress, anxiety, burnout, and coping with life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing new behaviors to reduce symptoms like low mood or anxiety. Mindfulness practices teach simple attention and breathing exercises to reduce reactivity and improve sleep or focus.Choosing the right approach is a shared process. The therapist will talk with each person about concerns, goals, and daily life to decide which methods to try first. Treatment plans can be adjusted over time so the work stays useful and realistic.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility. Video calls recreate a face-to-face conversation, phone sessions work when video isn’t possible, and live chat or text messaging lets people check in between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to keep continuity during moves or travel.
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.
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.
Existential Therapy
Takes the larger questions seriously: meaning, choice, mortality, responsibility. Suited to periods when the difficulty is less a symptom than a sense that something has to change.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 39 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to William
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point