Stephanie KujawaLCSW

Stephanie Kujawa is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) practicing in Illinois with 13 years of experience. She focuses on common and stressful life struggles like anxiety, depression, relationship strain, and self-esteem concerns. She also offers support around pregnancy and childbirth related stress and other life changes.

Stephanie keeps sessions warm and interactive. She uses straightforward conversation to help people notice patterns, try small changes, and build day-to-day coping skills. Respect and sensitivity guide her work, with no shaming or labels.

Her background includes long-term clinical practice and work with people who have faced trauma and mental health crises. That experience informs how she responds when emotions feel intense or overwhelming. She pays attention to how past attachment and abandonment issues show up in current relationships.

Sessions often address practical problems such as communication difficulties, money stress, caregiver strain, and navigating separation or divorce. Stephanie also helps with body image, seasonal mood shifts, panic attacks, and social anxiety. She invites clients to name specific goals so therapy stays focused and useful.

Stephanie tailors each plan to the person in front of her. She blends different evidence-based techniques into clear steps clients can practice between meetings. The aim is steady progress that fits into a busy life, not instant fixes.

To begin, Stephanie asks people to identify what they want to change and then builds a plan together. Her style is collaborative, calm, and direct, with an emphasis on small, manageable shifts that add up over time.

Evidence-based approaches and online care

Stephanie integrates several evidence-based therapeutic techniques in clear, easy language. Cognitive-behavioral approaches focus on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing them with real-life experiments to reduce anxiety and low mood. Dialectical-behavioral informed work emphasizes skills for regulating strong emotions, improving distress tolerance, and handling relationship conflicts. She also draws on psychodynamic ideas to look at how early attachment and abandonment experiences influence current relationships.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. She collaborates with clients to pick methods that match their goals, preferences, and what feels most useful in weekly sessions. That collaborative process includes trying different techniques and adjusting the plan as needs change.

If you are considering online therapy, confirm the available session formats before booking since the biography did not list them. Many people find online sessions easier to fit into a busy day, allow shorter check-ins when needed, and reduce travel time. Therapists can use online meetings to practice communication skills, coach through panic or pregnancy-related stress, and assign brief exercises between sessions to keep progress moving.