Kimberley VanHaitsma, LMSW

Kimberley VanHaitsma is a licensed master social worker who focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and the toll of caregiving and chronic health issues. She uses straightforward, practical conversation to help people find clearer coping steps. Her approach aims to reduce overwhelm and restore everyday functioning.

Kim has been working in social work roles for about 10 years and brings earlier healthcare experience into counseling. She has supported people in crisis settings and in geriatric care, and she has supervised limited license social workers as they moved toward full licensure. Those roles shaped her attention to safety, brief intervention, and practical problem solving.

In sessions she focuses on boundary setting, managing compassion fatigue, and building self-care routines that fit each person's life. She also helps people handle grief, relationship strain, career stress, and transitions. Her background includes work with chronic pain, illness, disability, and visual impairment, so she often connects mental and physical health in treatment planning.

Kim uses several therapeutic approaches such as client-centered work, cognitive behavioral techniques, dialectical behavior skills, mindfulness, and motivational interviewing. She aims to keep interventions concrete - practicing new skills, testing small changes, and tracking what helps over time.

Sessions are offered in English and are grounded in respectful, direct conversation. People who want to start are asked to use the site's matching process to choose a time that fits their schedule.

How her approaches translate to online care

Client-centered therapy focuses on the person, not labels. The therapist listens closely, reflects what she hears, and helps the client set their own goals. This approach is useful for people who want a supportive, respectful space to make sense of their situation.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect. It teaches practical exercises and small behavioral experiments to reduce anxiety, improve mood, and manage stress. Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, adds skills for managing intense emotion and improving relationships through grounding and regulation techniques.

Finding the right approach is part of the work and is decided together. The therapist will collaborate with each person to choose techniques that fit their goals, daily life, and what feels doable in sessions.

Session formats are not specified here, so please confirm current online options before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit counseling into a busy day, reduce travel time, and allow shorter check-ins when needed. It also supports people managing chronic illness or caregiving responsibilities by offering more flexible ways to meet without changing other routines.