Jennifer Fitkin, LCSW, CSW

Jennifer Fitkin is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and CSW with two decades of practical therapy experience. She began her practice in Iowa and has worked in multiple states and settings. Jennifer draws on a long career that includes clinical, supervisory, and leadership roles. Her background includes work in residential treatment, foster care support, juvenile justice programs, and correctional settings. She has served as a therapist, clinical supervisor, deputy senior clinician, senior clinician, and Clinical Director in a residential program focused on attachment issues. These roles shaped a hands-on, pragmatic approach to care. Jennifer uses straightforward methods to help people manage stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, and life transitions such as divorce and midlife reevaluation. She often combines Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with Motivational Interviewing and solution-focused strategies to set practical goals. Mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ideas appear in sessions to help people notice thoughts and choose values-based actions. She also brings experience with parenting, adoption and foster care concerns, attachment difficulties, grief, and process addictions. Her work attends to family of origin issues, communication struggles, control and impulsivity, and financial or purpose-related stressors that surface in midlife. Outside of therapy, Jennifer values movement and nature. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Social Work from the University of Northern Iowa, and she is a CrossFit Level 1 Trainer. Her practical focus emphasizes sleep, movement, and nutrition as parts of mental health care.

How her approaches translate to online therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then take action guided by personal values. It is often used for anxiety, depression, and life transitions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on practical strategies to change unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns, useful for mood issues, stress, and some addictive behaviors. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at patterns from early relationships and how they affect current connections and trust, which can help with parenting, attachment concerns, and relationship patterns.

Choosing the best approach is collaborative. The therapist will talk with the client about goals and preferences and try methods that fit the person’s needs. Adjustments are made over time if something isn’t working, so the process is flexible and interactive.

If you plan to use online therapy, confirm the current session options before booking so you know what formats are available. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life, reduce travel time, and allow shorter check-ins when needed. It can also support consistent weekly work on skills like mindfulness, behavioral experiments from CBT, or values-focused ACT exercises without requiring an in-person visit.