Penny McGrath, MA, LCPC
Penny is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) in the State of Illinois. She is a Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional (CCATP), a Certified Mindfulness-Informed Professional (CMIP), and a Clinical Telemental Health Provider (CTMH). She has extensive experience working with anxiety combining a relational, mindfulness-based perspective with neuroscientific facts about how the brain works, which helps improve compliance with coping skills and therapy outcomes. Penny also borrows from well-researched modalities such as CBT, ACT, and DBT.
She has 25 years experience as a therapist. She has worked in a variety of mental health settings including partial hospitalization, inpatient, in home and outpatient agencies. She has over 10 years experience supervising graduate students and Licensed Professional Counselors.
Penny’s areas of expertise include working with children and adolescents who struggle with separation anxiety, OCD, social anxiety, grief and loss, and depression. She works with young adults in navigating the transition from high school to college or college to the workplace. Penny also sees adults experiencing anxiety, OCD, ADHD, depression, life transitions including divorce, illness, grief and loss, parenting challenges, and the social emotional effects of narcolepsy (CBT-H).
Penny has a warm and engaging style of getting to know her clients and joining them where they are at with empathy and understanding. Though change within our lives is constant, most of us struggle with tolerating the uncertainty that comes along with it. We get caught up in the “what ifs” rather than staying present in the “what is”, which causes additional, unnecessary suffering. People often seek therapy when they realize that their coping skills are ineffective for their current situation and no longer serve them. Penny works with clients to create awareness of when thought misperceptions arise, explore how past experiences have shaped how they show up in the world, and differentiate between reacting versus responding to a situation.
