Shari Peterson , LICSW

Shari Peterson is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker with more than 20 years in mental health. She practices in Minnesota and brings broad experience from community mental health, school settings, and outpatient care. Shari focuses on practical help for everyday struggles and listens first to understand each person’s situation.

She helps people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and ADHD. She also supports those facing addiction, trauma, domestic violence, and relationship or family problems. Shari works with concerns around eating, sleep, parenting, anger, self-esteem, bipolar disorder, and LGBT-related issues.

Her style is warm, relational, and strengths-based. Sessions are person-centered and tailored to the individual. She values honesty and a respectful, collaborative relationship while helping people identify steps forward.

Shari integrates multiple approaches to match the person and the problem. She uses client-centered work, cognitive-behavioral techniques, mindfulness, motivational interviewing, and tools from narrative and the Gottman Method when appropriate. The focus is on practical skills, clearer patterns, and small changes that add up.

People meet her to talk through specific problems or long-standing patterns. She pays attention to attachment, body image, chronic illness and pain, codependency, communication struggles, dissociation, and family of origin issues. Shari aims to help clients build coping skills, clearer boundaries, and a more manageable daily life.

Approaches that translate to online care

Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and building a respectful relationship. It helps when someone needs a supportive space to talk, feel heard, and find their own solutions. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at patterns of thought and behavior and teaches practical skills to manage anxiety, depression, and everyday stresses. Mindfulness therapy introduces simple attention practices to reduce reactivity and improve emotional noticing.

Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what has or has not helped before. Then she adapts techniques so they match the person’s needs and the online format, working collaboratively to test what fits best.

Online formats offer practical flexibility. Video calls approximate an in-person session and allow visual cues. Phone sessions use less bandwidth and can fit into a work break. Live chat and text-based messaging make brief check-ins or stepwise problem-solving easier between sessions. These options help people access therapy from different places and schedules while using the therapeutic tools described above.