Shelley Janz, LCSW

Shelley Janz is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 20 years of experience in Wisconsin. She helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, grief, relationship strain, addiction concerns, and challenges like parenting, caregiving, or career crossroads. Shelley aims to create a calm, respectful space where people can name their main goals and begin practical steps toward them.

She uses straightforward, goal-focused methods such as cognitive behavioral therapy to look at thoughts and actions that keep problems stuck. Shelley also brings client-centered care and dialectical behavior ideas to help people build emotion regulation and communication skills. Motivational interviewing and mindfulness strategies are added when they fit the person's goals.

Shelley has extensive experience supporting those dealing with loss, end-of-life concerns, and long-term caregiving stress. She also has worked with people from LGBT communities and with first responder and law enforcement backgrounds. Her background gives her familiarity with complex grief, compassion fatigue, and co-occurring concerns such as chronic illness or addiction.

Sessions focus on practical tools people can use between meetings, clear goal-setting, and checking progress as work moves forward. Shelley emphasizes respect for age, gender, sexual orientation, and race, and she adapts the approach to each person's values and needs.

If someone is nervous about starting, Shelley aims to make the first steps simple: identify one or two priorities, try a few small changes, and adjust the plan from there. She supports people through the process of change while tracking what is actually helping.

Therapeutic approaches and online care

Shelley commonly uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help people notice unhelpful thoughts and change behaviors that keep problems going. CBT is practical and often focuses on small experiments and skills to reduce anxiety, depression, or problematic patterns.

She also draws on dialectical behavior therapy ideas to teach emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and clearer communication. DBT-informed skills can be useful when emotions feel overwhelming or when relationships are strained.

Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Shelley will work with each person to figure out which combination of skills and methods fits their goals, values, and daily life. That may mean trying CBT exercises for a while, then adding mindfulness or motivational interviewing techniques if needed.

Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video calls let people work face-to-face from another location, phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited, live chat supports shorter check-ins, and messaging helps track progress between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, caregiving, or health schedules.