Holly Gardenier

Holly Gardenier is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with 35 years of experience. She helps people who are facing grief, addiction, trauma, anxiety, depression, and major life changes. Her style is steady and direct, aimed at helping people name what matters and find workable next steps.

Holly emphasizes practical skills alongside open conversation. She draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help people notice what matters and take action. She also uses client-centered approaches to follow the person's lead and Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills to manage overwhelming feelings.

Her work often focuses on grief and end-of-life concerns in addition to substance use, eating issues, and relationship struggles. She also addresses attachment and family of origin issues, guilt, shame, and questions around gender and identity. Sessions include mindfulness exercises and strategies for tolerating uncertainty.

Holly encourages small daily practices, like brief meditation, to support clearer decisions and steadier emotion. She aims to help clients move beyond surface reactions and explore deeper patterns that shape behavior. She frames therapy as a collaborative journey where the client’s values guide change.

Clients come away with concrete tools to manage distress and with clearer choices about what to do next. The process is about peeling back layers, naming hurt, and building skills to cope with loss, stress, or difficult transitions.

Approaches that translate to online support

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice their values and take meaningful action despite painful thoughts. It uses simple exercises to clarify what matters and to build habits that match those values. Client-Centered Therapy focuses on warm, nonjudgmental listening so the person leads the work and solutions emerge from their own experience. Dialectical Behavior Therapy teaches concrete skills for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and clearer communication.

Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist and client will talk about current struggles, what has helped before, and what goals feel most important. Together they will try methods that fit the person’s needs and adjust based on what actually helps.

The biography does not list specific online session types, so confirm session options before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life, for example by removing travel time, allowing shorter check-ins during a work break, or making it possible to join from a calmer location. It also lets clients practice skills like brief mindfulness or DBT grounding in real life between sessions. Licensed professionals can adapt exercises from ACT and DBT for video or phone visits, and the focus remains on building daily habits and managing grief, addiction, or anxiety in practical ways.