Mary Koch , LMHC

Mary Koch is a licensed mental health counselor with eight years of clinical experience. She greets clients with a warm, nonjudgmental presence and focuses on helping people notice small changes that make a difference. Her manner is down-to-earth and practical, and she often guides conversations so clients can hear their own thoughts differently.

Mary uses a mix of approaches to help people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and trauma. She draws from cognitive behavioral ideas to change unhelpful thinking, and from acceptance-focused work to help people notice difficult feelings without being driven by them. Attachment-based ideas also shape how she understands relationship struggles and patterns of closeness and distance.

Her background includes outpatient work for people with co-occurring substance use and mental health concerns, school-based services for children through college-age youth, and time providing counseling in correctional settings. She has experience supporting people through grief, identity questions, domestic violence, and complex diagnoses.

Sessions emphasize practical skills, gentle reframing, and the client’s own wisdom. Mary aims to create a judge-free space where people can be angry, sad, relieved, or unsure while they work through next steps. She often offers small tools and reframes that clients can try between meetings.

Mary practices in Iowa and holds licensure as a mental health counselor in Florida and Iowa as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Sessions are conducted in English and include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text messaging. To begin, a short matching questionnaire is used to pair people with a schedule that fits their needs.

How Mary blends approaches for online care

Mary commonly uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help people notice thoughts and feelings without getting pulled into them, then identify meaningful actions to move toward. This approach is helpful for anxiety, stress, and coping with life changes.

She also draws on Attachment-Based Therapy to understand how early relationship patterns affect current connections and communication. This makes it easier to address issues like abandonment worries, trust, and problems with closeness.

Choosing the right approach is part of the work. Mary treats this as a collaborative process and discusses goals and preferences before settling on which methods to try. She will adjust techniques based on what a person finds useful and what helps progress toward their goals.

Online therapy with Mary is offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text messaging. Video sessions allow for face-to-face conversation and body language cues, phone sessions can be simpler when bandwidth is limited, and chat or text can be used for brief check-ins or when a written format feels easier. These options make it simpler to fit therapy into busy days and varied schedules.