Lura Smedstad, LPC

Lura Smedstad is a licensed professional counselor who helps people facing anxiety, depression, grief, and life transitions. She works with adults and teens to reduce stress, clarify goals, and rebuild relationships. People come to her when trauma, caregiving strain, or aging concerns make daily life harder. Her approach blends clear, practical tools with creative expression. She uses cognitive behavioral therapy to identify unhelpful thoughts and build new habits. She also draws on emotionally-focused and somatic methods to help clients notice feelings in the body and improve how they connect with others. Smedstad brings two decades of counseling experience to sessions. Her background includes work in psychiatric hospital settings, a school she co-led for personal growth, and ministry partnerships in several states. She completed a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with an art therapy concentration and holds a Minnesota LPC credential. In sessions she aims to be direct and compassionate. People can expect straightforward feedback, collaborative goal-setting, and therapeutic art or body-centered exercises when helpful. She emphasizes practical steps clients can use between meetings. Lura also focuses on caregiver stress and aging and geriatric issues, helping clients manage role changes and plan for evolving needs. To begin, people choose the Start Therapy button, fill a short matching questionnaire, and schedule based on the therapist's availability.

Approaches that translate to online care

CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, focuses on identifying unhelpful thinking patterns and building practical behavior changes that reduce anxiety and depression. It breaks problems into small steps and teaches skills people can use between sessions.

Emotionally-focused therapy helps people understand and shift patterns in close relationships by noticing emotions and practicing new ways of connecting. This approach is useful for intimacy-related struggles and relationship repair.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what feels most useful. Together they decide whether CBT, emotionally-focused work, somatic practices, or a mix is the best fit.

Confirm current online session options before booking, as formats are not listed here. Online work can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy routine, shorten check-ins, avoid travel time, and allow use of art or grounding exercises from home. Therapists trained in these methods can adapt exercises and somatic practices to remote sessions so people can continue progress without changing their daily schedule.